THE WORLD ATLAS

Empire · 1492–1976 · Europe

Spanish Empire

Also known as Spain, Viceroyalty of New Spain, Viceroyalty of Peru, Viceroyalty of New Granada, Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, Luisiana, Florida, Florida (Spain), Cuba (Spain), Hispaniola (Spain), Santo Domingo (Spain), Spanish Sahara, Spanish Morocco, Spanish Guinea, Habsburg Netherlands

Spain's empire grew from the union of Castile and Aragon under Isabella and Ferdinand, who in 1492 conquered Granada and sponsored Columbus's first voyage. Within two generations conquistadors toppled the Aztec and Inca empires, and silver from Potosí and Zacatecas paid for Habsburg wars across Europe, where Charles V and Philip II also ruled the Netherlands, much of Italy and, from 1580 to 1640, Portugal.

The Americas were run through viceroyalties, royal courts and the Catholic Church, with Indigenous labour forced through the encomienda and mita systems and enslaved Africans shipped in. After Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808, the mainland American colonies won independence by 1825. Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines were lost to the United States in 1898, and the last African holdings were given up by 1976.

Follow its story on the map

The Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, built for Philip II in 1563–84
The Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, built for Philip II in 1563–84 Zvonimir Stamenov · CC BY-SA 4.0
Years
1492–1976
Capital
Madrid from 1561 (Valladolid 1601–1606); earlier the court moved between Toledo, Valladolid and other cities
Greatest extent
1810, about 13.70 million km²
Region
Europe

c. 13.7M km² (Taagepera 1997), including vast claimed but thinly settled lands in North and South America, plus the Philippines; c. 13.7M km² (Taagepera 1997)

Legacy

Spanish is now the first language of nearly 500 million people, and Catholic churches, grid-plan towns and legal traditions across the Americas and the Philippines trace back to Spanish rule.

Timeline of Spanish Empire

  1. Granada conquered; Columbus reaches the Caribbean

    The marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon had joined Spain's two largest kingdoms, and from 1482 they waged a ten-year war against Granada, the last Muslim state in Iberia. On 2 January 1492 its last sultan, Boabdil, surrendered the city, completing the Christian 'Reconquista'. That spring the monarchs agreed to sponsor Christopher Columbus, who sailed west hoping to reach Asia and on 12 October 1492 landed in the Bahamas, then reached Cuba and Hispaniola. In one year Spain was united under Christian rule and gained the first foothold of an empire in the Americas.

  2. Fall of Tenochtitlan: Spanish rule in Mexico begins

    In 1519 Hernán Cortés landed in Mexico with a few hundred Spaniards and marched inland, gaining tens of thousands of allies among peoples who resented Aztec rule, above all the Tlaxcalans. Driven out of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, in 1520, he returned with his allies and boats built for the lake and besieged the island city from late May, while smallpox devastated its people. On 13 August 1521 the last emperor, Cuauhtémoc, was captured and the city fell. Spain built Mexico City on its ruins, and New Spain became the core of its empire in North America.

  3. Pizarro captures Atahualpa at Cajamarca; conquest of the Inca begins

    The Inca Empire, the largest state in the Americas, had just been torn apart by a civil war between the brothers Atahualpa and Huáscar, and weakened by epidemics. Francisco Pizarro, with fewer than 200 Spaniards, met the victorious Atahualpa at Cajamarca in the Andes on 16 November 1532. In a surprise attack using guns, horses and steel, the Spaniards killed many of the emperor's unarmed attendants and took him prisoner. Atahualpa paid a huge ransom in gold and silver but was executed in 1533. Spain went on to take Cusco and the Inca lands, and Peru became a second great centre of its American empire.

  4. Legazpi arrives in the Philippines: the Spanish East Indies begin

    Ferdinand Magellan's expedition had reached the Philippines for Spain in 1521, but no lasting colony followed. In 1564 Miguel López de Legazpi sailed from New Spain (Mexico) with about 500 men, and in 1565 he founded the first Spanish settlement at Cebu. In the same year his navigator Andrés de Urdaneta found a route back across the Pacific to Mexico, which made regular trade possible. Legazpi founded Manila in 1571 and made it the capital. The Philippines became Spain's base in Asia for over 300 years, linked to Mexico by the Manila galleons carrying American silver to China.

  5. Philip II takes the Portuguese throne: the Iberian Union

    In 1578 the young King Sebastian of Portugal died in battle in Morocco without an heir, and his successor, Cardinal Henry, died in 1580. Philip II of Spain, a grandson of King Manuel I, claimed the throne and sent an army under the Duke of Alba, which defeated the rival claimant, António, Prior of Crato, near Lisbon. In 1581 the Cortes of Tomar accepted Philip as king. Portugal kept its own laws, but the union under one king joined the Spanish and Portuguese empires. Philip ruled the largest collection of territories in the world, from the Americas to Africa and Asia.

  6. Portugal breaks away, ending the Iberian Union

    Under Philip IV, Spain's chief minister, the Count-Duke of Olivares, pressed Portugal to pay more and send troops for Spain's wars, while the Dutch seized Portuguese colonies. In 1640, as Spain was also fighting a revolt in Catalonia, Portuguese nobles rose in Lisbon on 1 December and proclaimed the Duke of Braganza king as John IV. The Restoration War that followed lasted until 1668, when Spain recognised Portugal's independence in the Treaty of Lisbon. Spain lost Portugal and its empire in Brazil, Africa and Asia, though it kept Ceuta.

  7. Treaties of Utrecht: Philip V keeps Spain; Gibraltar and Menorca go to Britain

    When the childless Charles II of Spain died in 1700, he left his throne to Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV of France. Fearing a union of Spain and France, Britain, the Dutch Republic and Austria went to war. The Peace of Utrecht in 1713 let Philip V keep Spain and its American empire, on condition that he gave up any claim to the French throne. Under the Utrecht treaties and the related Treaty of Rastatt, Spain's lands in Italy and the southern Netherlands went mostly to Austria, with Sicily to Savoy, and Gibraltar and Menorca were ceded to Britain. Spain lost its European possessions outside Iberia but kept its empire overseas.

  8. Napoleon invades; the wars of independence in America begin

    In 1808 Napoleon forced Charles IV and his son Ferdinand VII to give up the Spanish crown and made his own brother Joseph king. Spaniards rose against the French on 2 May 1808 in Madrid, beginning the long Peninsular War, in which British troops fought alongside Spanish and Portuguese forces. With the king a prisoner in France, local juntas in the American colonies took over government in his name, and from 1810 many moved towards independence. The crisis broke Spain's hold on its American empire and began the wars of independence that ended it on the mainland by the mid-1820s.

  9. Royalist defeat at Ayacucho ends Spanish rule in South America

    After 1810 independence movements led by Simón Bolívar, José de San Martín and others gradually freed most of Spanish South America, but royalist armies still held the highlands of Peru. On 9 December 1824 a patriot army under Simón Bolívar's lieutenant Antonio José de Sucre defeated a royalist army of similar or larger size near Ayacucho in Peru. The wounded viceroy, José de la Serna, was captured, and the royal army of Peru capitulated. The battle effectively ended Spanish rule in South America; the last royalist strongholds, at Callao and Chiloé, held out until 1826, leaving only Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Americas.

  10. Spanish–American War: Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam lost

    In 1895 Cubans rose again against Spanish rule, and the harsh Spanish response angered the United States. After the US battleship Maine blew up in Havana harbour in February 1898, the United States declared war in April. The US Navy destroyed Spanish fleets at Manila Bay and off Santiago de Cuba, and US troops landed in Cuba and Puerto Rico. By the Treaty of Paris, signed on 10 December 1898, Spain gave up Cuba and ceded Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines to the United States. Spain's empire, once worldwide, was reduced to a few territories in Africa.

  11. Spanish protectorate in northern Morocco established

    European powers were dividing North Africa, and France and Spain had agreed to share influence in Morocco. After France imposed a protectorate on the Sultan of Morocco in the Treaty of Fez in March 1912, a Franco-Spanish treaty in November 1912 gave Spain a protectorate over a strip of northern Morocco, including the Rif mountains, with its capital at Tetuán. Spain faced fierce resistance there, notably the Rif War of the 1920s led by Abd el-Krim. The protectorate was Spain's main new colony in the 20th century, and it was where Francisco Franco's army rose in revolt in 1936.

  12. Northern Morocco joins independent Morocco

    After the Second World War, nationalist movements across North Africa demanded independence. France ended its protectorate in Morocco in March 1956, and Spain, under Franco, soon followed. On 7 April 1956 Spain recognised Morocco's independence and gave up its protectorate in the north, keeping the cities of Ceuta and Melilla. After the short Ifni War, Spain ceded the southern zone around Cape Juby in 1958, and it kept the enclave of Sidi Ifni until 1969. Spain's remaining African empire was now mainly the Spanish Sahara.

  13. Madrid Accords: Spain agrees to leave Western Sahara (withdrawal 1976)

    Spanish Sahara, a desert colony on the Atlantic coast, was claimed by both Morocco and Mauritania, while the Polisario Front fought for independence. On 6 November 1975, with Franco dying, King Hassan II of Morocco sent some 350,000 unarmed marchers across the border in the 'Green March'. On 14 November Spain signed the Madrid Accords, agreeing to hand over administration to Morocco and Mauritania. Spain withdrew in early 1976, and Morocco and Mauritania moved in. The withdrawal ended Spain's colonial empire in Africa, though the status of Western Sahara remains disputed.

Periods and reigns

Rulers

Realms on the map

Wars

Chapters

Sources