Given that the initial impetus for Columbus heading west was to reach the riches of Asia, it is undoubtable that the discovery of the New World was a pretty big disappointment. While Portugal became richer and more powerful, importing goods from as far away as Japan via its trade route around the southern tip of Africa, all Spain had was a handful of islands filled with natives who didn’t really have anything worth trading. Numerous Spanish expeditions explored the New World, not with a sense of amazement at the strange new place they had found, but with growing frustration that the huge land mass blocked them from sailing further westward to Asia. However, there level of disinterest quickly evaporated after two major events that took place in the first few years of the 1520s.
The first of these was the conquest of the Aztec Empire by Hernan Cortes in 1521, which in turn led the Spanish to realize that holy crap, the New World contained a literal fuck ton of gold and silver. At the time, finding new sources of gold and silver was a pretty big fucking deal given that pretty much all money worldwide was made from the two metals and people weren’t exactly just finding random easily accessible mines anymore in the Old World. Within months of the conquest being completed, ships laden with gold and silver began sailing from the port of Veracruz in Mexico to the port of Seville in Spain, which quickly became one of the most populous and cosmopolitan cities in Europe. Within twenty years, the flow of gold and silver more than doubled, with further mines being secured in Peru. The king and elites of Spain, suddenly found themselves ridiculously wealthy, and the country began importing large amounts of grain and luxury goods, flooding the European market with newly minted coins which resulted in rampant inflation throughout the continent. It was only the beginning.
The second reason the New World became more interesting was in 1522, when a Spanish expedition led by a fellow named Ferdinand Magellan completed the first circumnavigation of the world by sailing around the southern tip of South America. While Ferdinand himself didn’t complete the journey, killed by some locals in the Philippines, one of his five ships managed to complete the journey, proving that it was possible to reach Asia by sailing west. Unfortunately, given the Portuguese weren’t really down with Spanish ships sailing south of Africa and the prevailing winds and currents made sailing back east across the Pacific difficult, this didn’t do the Spanish much good for awhile. However, after some forty years of failing to find a route, losing many ships and crews, they eventually figured out how to catch the right winds and currents by sailing north. As a result, in 1564, Spain conquered the Philippines and began trading directly with Asia, breaking the Portuguese monopoly. Ships filled with silver from Mexico would sail to Asia and then return with silks and spices, which would be hauled by mule across Mexico, then put on a ship and sent to Spain, which became even more fabulously wealthy.
The new wealth of Spain couldn’t have come at a better time. Thanks to an advantageous marriage and some early military successes, by 1520 the Spanish monarchy controlled not just Spain and large chunks of the New World, but also the Netherlands and scattered lands across Italy and Central and Eastern Europe. The ruling Habsburg dynasty was suddenly the most powerful in Europe, which of course led to a war with some of its neighbors, most prominently France, which lasted for the next ten years. Flush with cash, the Habsburgs raised massive armies to fight their wars in Europe and huge naval fleets to protect their trade lines across the oceans. So desperate was France to limit the power of Spain, that they even allied themselves with the Islamic Ottoman Empire in 1543 when launching a second war, which failed just as miserably as the first, leaving Spain even more powerful. However, a growing religious schism was soon to divide Europe in new ways.
In 1517, Martin Luther launched the Protestant Reformation by nailing a list of reasons he thought the Catholic church sucked on a church door in Germany. Over the next ninety years, the Europe became divided between the old school Catholics and various new kid on the block Protestant sects. Though basically believing the same thing with just some minor variations, mostly involving how much power the Pope and his lackeys had over divining God’s will, these two competing belief systems quickly fell into conflict with each other, with numerous cases of hangings, stake burnings, and other such things people do when they find some new stupid reason to hate each other. As often happens, the situation quickly shifted from a religious one to a political one, with entire states and countries becoming Catholic or Protestant territories, often driven by the political and personal ambitions of the various nobles in control. As the most powerful Catholic nation in Europe, Spain and its Habsburg rulers of course felt it was their duty to protect their preferred version of the church everywhere they could. The resulting wars and political machinations would bankrupt the country several times.
