Rise as a World Power: From the Renaissance to the nineteenth century

Until the late 15th century, Castile, León, Aragón, and Navarre were four independent states, with independent languages, laws, monarchs, armies and, in the case of Aragon and Castile, two empires: the former with one in the Mediterranean and the latter with a new, rapidly growing one in the Americas. The process of political unification continued into the early 16th century. It was the unification of these separate Iberian empires that became the base of what is now referred to as the Spanish Empire. The political, social and military adaptations of the 15th century and with the rising output of the American silver mines from the middle of the 16th century, made Spain the most powerful country in Europe throughout the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century.
An anachronous map showing areas pertaining to the Spanish Empire at various times over a period exceeding 400 years. For detailed key click on map. The Spanish colonial empire at its territorial height in 1790. Regions of influence (explored/claimed but never controlled or vice versa) or short-lived / disputed colonies. Portuguese possessions ruled jointly under the Spanish sovereign, 1580–1640. Territories lost at, or prior to, the 1714 Peace of Utrecht.
Equatorial Guinea, Spanish Morocco and West Africa, 1884–1975.
An anachronous map showing areas pertaining to the Spanish Empire at various times over a period exceeding 400 years. For detailed key click on map. The Spanish colonial empire at its territorial height in 1790. Regions of influence (explored/claimed but never controlled or vice versa) or short-lived / disputed colonies. Portuguese possessions ruled jointly under the Spanish sovereign, 1580–1640. Territories lost at, or prior to, the 1714 Peace of Utrecht. Equatorial Guinea, Spanish Morocco and West Africa, 1884–1975.

It was in the 16th century, during the long reigns of the first two Spanish Habsburgs (Charles I and Philip II) that Spain reached its apogee. The Spanish Empire covered most territories of South and Central America, Mexico, the south of North America (New Spain), some of Eastern Asia (including the Philippines), the Iberian peninsula (including the Portuguese empire (from 1580), southern Italy, Sicily, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. It was the first empire about which it was said that the sun did not set. It was an Age of Discovery, with daring explorations by sea and by land, the opening up of new trade routes across oceans, conquests and the beginning of European colonialism. Along with the arrival of precious metals, spices, luxuries, and new agricultural plants the explorers, soldiers, sailors, traders and missionaries also brought back with them a flood of knowledge that transformed the European understanding of the world.

Of note during the 16th and 17th centuries was the cultural efflorescence now known as the Spanish Golden Age and the intellectual movement known as the School of Salamanca.

The lingering “decline of Spain” set in during the 17th century. This stagnation was a complex phenomena involving political, social and economic factors, but key to it was the strain of ever expanding military efforts. For a long time these were generally successful (with the notable exception in the north of the Low Countries) in defending the territorial and religious integrity of the scattered Habsburg’s empire. But these massive ongoing commitments ultimately bankrupted and bled Spain dry during the vast Thirty Years War that tore Europe apart. By 1640 rebellions led to the succession of Portugal and Catalonia. With forces stretched to the limit across Europe, Spain still managed to recover Catalonia and the Italian territories but not Portugal, thereby also losing those territories ruled from Lisbon, including Brazil, and strongholds in Africa and India and with it a good deal of the lucrative eastern spice trade and most of the Atlantic slave trade. The growing beggary forced many to live by their wits and picaresque literature flourished.

With the death of a childless Spanish Habsburg king controversy over succession to the throne consumed much of Europe during the first years of the 18th century. The War of Spanish Succession, which combined a wide ranging international conflict with a civil war, finally cost Spain its European empire and its postion as a leading power on the Continent, although it retained its overseas territories.

A new dynasty—the French Bourbons—was installed, and with it a true Spanish state was established when the absolutist first Bourbon king Philip V of Spain in 1707 dissolved the pro-parliamentary Aragon court and unified the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon into a single, unified Kingdom of Spain, abolishing many of the regional privileges and autonomies (fueros) that had hampered Habsburg rule. The National Day of Catalonia still commemorates this defeat.

Following the wars at its commencement the 18th century saw a long, slow recovery, with an expansion of the iron and steel industries in the Basque Country, a growth in ship building, a gradual increase in trade and the growth of Castile’s population. The new Bourbon monarchy drew on the French system in trying to modernize the administration and economy, in which it was much more successful in the former than the latter. With the ending of Cadiz's royally granted trade monopoly with the American territories trade finally began to grow strongly in the last years of the century. Spain's effective military assistance to the rebellious British colonies in the American War of Independence won it renewed international standing.