Spain: Notable Colonies and Settlements

Ordered by founding date

1496 - 1795 - (Spanish) Santo Domingo / (Spanish) Hispaniola (All Facts)

• Settlement claimed by Bartholomew Columbus during the reign of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella

• Colony founded by Bartholomew Columbus during the reign of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella

• Oldest European city in the Americas

• The regional capital of the Spanish Empire

• It was so named in honor of St. Dominic

• Expeditions to conquer the New World in Spain were all launched from this settlement

• The fortunes of Spanish settlers were threatened by their failure to find a major supply of gold in this namesake colony of New Spain

  • So instead they moved away from the futile search for the precious metal towards the cultivation of sugarcane, a profitable cash crop which they benefited from reaping via the exploitation of the New World inhabitants whom they enslaved

  • Only dwindling manpower threatened profits off of sugarcane, as only 60K of the original 250K inhabitants remained, the rest being killed off due to disease and maltreatment

  • Its population continued to dwindle from 300K to 20K after just 15 years of its founding

• In 1586, Francis Drake of England made a surprise attack on the namesake heavily fortified city, forcing the governor there to pay a large ransom

1492 / 1508 - 1898 - (Spanish) Puerto Rico (All Facts)

• Colony claimed by Christopher Columbus during the reign of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella

• Colony founded by Juan Ponce de Leon during the reign of King Ferdinand

1494 / 1509 - 1655 - Santiago / (Spanish) Jamaica (All Facts)

• Colony claimed by Christopher Columbus during the reign of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella

• Colony founded by Juan de Esquivel during the reign of King Ferdinand

1493 / 1511 - 1898 - (Spanish) Cuba / Havana (All Facts)

• Colony claimed by Christopher Columbus during the reign of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella

• Colony founded by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar during the reign of King Ferdinand

• Upon its foundation, it prepared for the immediate shipments of African slaves to overcome an acute shortage of enslaved laborers amongst the natives there

  • The African slaves from the Guinea coast were being sold to anxious colonists in the namesake colony

  • Each African slave was said to be capable of doing the work of four native slaves

  • Its colonists’ importation of slaves and moves to counter the decline in the native population stemmed settlers’ fears that Spain was going to abandon the Americas / New World

• By 1515, the Spanish founded its now capital-city, the namesake

• In 1555, its capital-city, the namesake, was attacked by the French

1515 - (Spanish) Bermudas (All Facts)

• Colony claimed by Juan de Bermudez during the reign of King Ferdinand

• Colony never founded by Spain

1501 / 1519 - 1821 - (Spanish) Panama (All Facts)

• Its namesake city was founded by Pedro Arias Davila, during the reign of King Charles

1521 - 1821 / 1824 - (Spanish) Mexico / “New Spain” / Mexico City (All Facts)

• Colony claimed by Hernan Cortes during the reign of King Charles

• Colony founded by Hernan Cortes during the reign of King Charles

  • Hernan Cortes and his forces defeated the Aztecs in the First and Second Siege of Tenochtitlan, which fell to the Spanish

• By 1620, its population was 1.2M

1525 - (Spanish) Colombia / Santa Maria (All Facts)

• Colony founded by Rodrigo de Bastidas during the reign of King Charles

1534 - (Spanish) Ecuador / Quito (All Facts)

• Colony founded by Sebastián de Belalcázar during the reign of King Charles

1535 - La Paz (All Facts)

• Short-lived settlement established on an island off the west coast of Mexico (Baja California) whose bay was named between the island and the mainland Santa Cruz by Hernan Cortes

1536 / 1580 - (Spanish) Argentina / Buenos Aires (All Facts)

• Colony claimed by Pedro de Mendoza

• Colony founded by Juan de Garay

• City founded by Pedro de Mendoza

• In 1573, Cordoba was another city founded in this colony

• In 1580, it was founded at the confluence of the Parna and Uruguay Rivers

  • From there, it assumed an air of permanence after it had been previously disbanded after attacks by natives there

1541 - 1818 (Spanish) Chile / Santiago (All Facts)

• Colony claimed by Diego de Almagro

• Colony founded by Pedro de Valdivia

• In 1608, King Philip III oversaw a royal decree which legalized the slavery of the natives in the namesake colony

1529 / 1542 - 1824 - (Spanish) Peru / Lima (All Facts)

• Colony claimed by Francisco Pizarro during the reign of King Charles

• Colony founded by Francisco Pizarro during the reign of King Charles

• Colony which was Spain’s richest as it was no accident that wealthy mine owners and silver millionaires had private armies to challenge the viceroys that attempted to take control of Peru following Pizarros’ death

• Colony which was politically unstable for awhile following Pizarro’s death

• Colony in which, from its mines at its city of Potosi, Spain grew incredibly rich

  • Spain worked to extract silver from its mines, especially from its local silver mountain “Cerro Rico” or “rich hill” where tons of bullion were mined for Spain each year

  • Despite this, the mining environment was anything but luxurious for the native Incans working within it, with the thin air at an altitude of 14K feet, bitter cold, and notorious roaring wind making mining work life difficult

• Colony in which the native Incans could only leave the workplace on Sunday to attend church

1513 / 1565 - 1763 / 1783 - 1821 - (Spanish) Florida / St. Augustine / San Agostin (All Facts)

• First Spanish Colony in the Americas

  • It was also the first successful Spanish colony in the Americas

• Colony claimed by Juan Ponce de Leon

  • The land was believed to be an island initially

  • It was named “land of flowers” in Spanish, or “floral land” because

    • of its abundance of flowers

    • the proximity of the religious feast of Pasqua de Flores de Leon upon its founding

• Colony founded by Pedro Menéndez de Aviles

  • It was originally on the site of the French Fort Caroline, but he renamed it San Mateo

• Colony upon which the Spanish brought to North America for the first time

  • beef cattle

  • the game of billiards

• Colony in which the Spanish fended off a native attack on the namesake, but lost their supplies and most of their fort they built there to a fire

• In 1566, the first Jesuit missionaries arrived there

• In 1568, Dominique de Gorgues and his French forces avenged the 1565 Spanish massacre of the French Huguenots at Fort Caroline by slaughtering and massacring hundreds of Spaniards here, having burned down their fort of San Mateo on the namesake

• In 1576, 287 colonists were evacuated from the northern settlement of Santa Elena following a siege there by natives during the reign of Hernando de Miranda

• In 1580, the Spanish destroyed a French vessel under Gilberto Gil while he was inquiring about Nicolas Strozzi at the mouth of St. John’s River in the namesake colony

• In 1586, Francis Drake and his English forces burned down the namesake city, during the Anglo-Spanish War

• In 1587, the Spanish evacuated their northern settlement there of Santa Elena

• In 1596, as the Spanish continued to explore the land around this colony and the American south-west, they introduced the first wheeled vehicles, wagons (similar to German farm carts), in the New World, which were used to haul supplies for the Spanish settlers

• Colony in which Franciscan Priests had converted an estimated 1,500 natives there to Christianity

• Its governors were

  • Pedro Menendez de Aviles

  • Hernando de Miranda

  • Pedro Menendez Marquez

1521 / 1565 - 1898 - (Spanish) Philippines / Manila (All Facts)

• Colony claimed by Ferdinand Magellan

• Colony founded by Miguel López de Legazpi

• In 1606, a Spanish expedition returning from the namesake recaptured part of the Moluccas from the Dutch

1598 - 1821 - (Spanish) New Mexico (All Facts)

• Colony founded by Juan de Onate

  • He set out on an expedition to the namesake with some 500 colonists

  • He established its first capital at San Gabriel, after a six-month search for the fabled Quivira (in modern-day Kansas), a legendary native American ruler whose cities were said to be encrusted with gold and precious stones

    • He had found the colony nearly deserted

  • He resigned as first Spanish governor of the namesake, notifying the viceroy of New Spain that the colony would be abandoned if reinforcements failed to arrive

1608 - 1811 - (Spanish) Paraguay (All Facts)

• Colony founded by the Jesuit Order / Society of Jesus of Spain

  • It was founded as a sort of religious Utopia

• Colony comprised of Guarani natives, 250K of whom lived there upon its founding and enjoyed royal protection from the rigors of slavery due to a decree signed by King Philip III, in which

  • All their material and spiritual needs were satisfied, except for the freedom to follow their former, disordered way of life in which work not a favorite pastime, living in a twilight world where all were treated as children

  • The Jesuits worked to convert them

  • Their days consisted of work, song, and prayer

  • Their walks to their work-fields were a religious procession

• Colony in which the Jesuits

  • built 30 towns, always to the same pattern:

    • a central grassed square was flanked by a church with a tower and three long-houses containing apartments for 100 families or more

• Colony consisting of “reducciones”, self-sufficient communities of Jesuit-backed Guarani which were efficient enough to export surplus food and draw envious interest from Spanish colonizers who were dependent on slave labor and cruelty

• Colony in which the Jesuits most important crop to be harvested was the human soul

1682 - Ysleta, Texas (All Facts)

• First settlement in Texas founded by Spaniards fleeing the Pueblo Revolt in the province of New Mexico in Mexico (New Spain)