# What happened to the Spanish Empire? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 8, 2008, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-spanish-empire/462597 "2008-09-08T13:20:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2008, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-spanish-empire/462597/61 "2008-09-12T02:32:36Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Have you read [this](http://www.poetry-online.org/chesterton_lepanto.htm)? Thanks for that link. Although I had heard of that poem I had never actually read it. [**Don Juan of Austria**](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_Austria) is a fascinating character in his own right and a sort of opposite to Philip II in many senses. He was a dashing young man who was popular and had a gift with people while his half brother was introspect and guarded. At a very young age was a great captain, first in the Morisco revolt and later at Lepanto. He finally died at the age of 31 in the low countries and his body was cut in 3 and smuggled through France to Spain. A fascinating biography. It was his secretary [Escobedo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_de_Escobedo) who was murdered at the suggestion of Philip the second’s secretary [Antonio Pérez](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Perez). It all makes for fascinating reading. Cloak and dagger adventures and plots which really happened. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2008, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-spanish-empire/462597/62 "2008-09-12T05:11:42Z")
> [@sailor](#): > > It all makes for fascinating reading. Cloak and dagger adventures and plots which really happened. King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck (Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.) The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin, And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in. He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon, He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon, And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day, And death is in the phial and the end of noble work, But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk! Don John’s hunting, and his hounds have bayed– Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid. Gun upon gun, ha! ha! Gun upon gun, hurrah! Don John of Austria Has loosed the cannonade! ---
**Author:** ![slaphead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@slaphead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slaphead)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2008, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-spanish-empire/462597/63 "2008-09-12T08:21:38Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > even if they form a majority in some place,s it won’t be a huge one, and they’ll soon be speaking English and voting Republican Last I heard about 15% of the US population was Hispanic, and 50% of all new immigrants were Hispanic. It’s not impossible that two generations from now Anglos will be learning Spanish and voting Democrat as part of the process of assimilating into the Estados Unidos. If this was the case, it might be interepreted as a triumph from beyond the grave of - the Spanish Empire! And thus is the hi-jack re-jacked. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2008, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-spanish-empire/462597/64 "2008-09-12T10:15:16Z")
What I found interesting is that Western Sahara is still _technically_ part of Spain, despite the fact it’s basically uninhabited. Yet the Polisario and Morocco have been fighting over it since 1975. It’s almost as bad as that Kashmiri glacier the Indians and Pakistanis maintain garrisons on for no better reason than it’s there and if they leave the other side might take it and… I don’t know, turn it into mineral water or something. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2008, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-spanish-empire/462597/65 "2008-09-12T10:22:36Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > What I found interesting is that Western Sahara is still _technically_ part of Spain, despite the fact it’s basically uninhabited. Yet the Polisario and Morocco have been fighting over it since 1975. It’s almost as bad as that Kashmiri glacier the Indians and Pakistanis maintain garrisons on for no better reason than it’s there and if they leave the other side might take it and… I don’t know, turn it into mineral water or something. Nope, Spanish rule over the Western Sahara ended in 1975. > [@](#): > > [Western Sahara - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Sahara) > > In the waning days of General Franco’s rule in November 1975, the Spanish government secretly signed on 14 November 1975, mere days before Franco’s death, a tripartite agreement with Morocco and Mauritania as it moved to abandon the Territory. Although the accords foresaw a tripartite administration, Morocco and Mauritania each moved to annex the territory, with Morocco taking control of the northern two-thirds of Western Sahara as its Southern Provinces and Mauritania taking control of the southern third as Tiris al-Gharbiyya. Spain terminated its presence in Spanish Sahara within three months, repatriating even Spanish corpses from its cemeteries. The Moroccan and Mauritanian moves, however, met staunch opposition from the Polisario, which had by now gained backing from Algeria. In 1979, following Mauritania’s withdrawal due to pressures from Polisario, Morocco extended its control to the rest of the territory, and gradually contained the guerrillas through setting up the extensive sand-berm in the desert to exclude guerilla fighters. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2008, 10:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-spanish-empire/462597/66 "2008-09-12T10:32:42Z")
> [@sailor](#): > > Nope, Spanish rule over the Western Sahara ended in 1975. My understanding is the Spanish abandoned the territory in 1975, but the UN still regards it as being “Under Spanish Administration”. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2008, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-spanish-empire/462597/67 "2008-09-12T11:09:21Z")
The Spanish Administration doesn’t, perhaps the UN didn’t get the memo. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2008, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-spanish-empire/462597/68 "2008-09-12T11:16:42Z")
> [@Illuminatiprimus](#): > > There was also the factor that Spain as we know it was a conglomeration of different nations joined through their monarch, not political union. The Hapsburgs only had direct control over Castille and the other parts of their empire (particularly Arragon and their Italian holdings) guarded their rights and independence fiercely. As a result if Spain needed more money and decided to raise taxes it could only do it directly in Castille and ask the other states pretty please if they’d raise taxes too. It seems to me that what you mean by “direct control” is what I mean by “ignoring Parliament.” In all of their Kingdoms, it was Parliament who could raise taxes - the Kings didn’t have the legal right to do so. But in Castilla, a high nobility that was busy draining resources and a low nobility that was busy sending sons to Flanders and other overseas locations let them raise taxes without opposition, whereas in Aragon and Navarra the respective permanent representatives refused to break procedure; that sentence “se obedece pero no se cumple” (we obey your orders but we can’t implement them) became standard with Phillip V’s orders for Diputación to raise taxes in Navarra, but only because previous Kings had bothered as little as possible with “that puny barbaric land”. If the King wanted to raise taxes in Aragon and Navarra, he had to call Parliament, go there and expose his case. Since he wouldn’t follow this procedure, he didn’t get what he wanted. But any “direct control” in Castilla was because there the King was allowed to ignore the existence of a Parliament. Carlos V famously had to ask the Castillian Parliament for money for his Emperorship campaign three times (including a Meeting in Coruña) before finally extracting it. For what territories are those figures for Aragon and Castilla? They can’t include the whole of each Kingdom, as they don’t make up anything near the 90+% I’d expect. Both Aragon and Castilla included “sub territories” with their own taxation. ---
**Author:** ![Illuminatiprimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/illuminatiprimus/32/11520_2.png) [@Illuminatiprimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Illuminatiprimus)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2008, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-spanish-empire/462597/69 "2008-09-12T11:33:19Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > It seems to me that what you mean by “direct control” is what I mean by “ignoring Parliament.” That’s exactly what I meant, and what monarchs felt was their due in the quasi-feudal part of the early modern period (England had this problem in spades too). I’m not saying kings should be able to raise taxes on a whim, but the Hapsburgs had more ability to do it in Castille than they could in any of their other territories. > [@](#): > > For what territories are those figures for Aragon and Castilla? They can’t include the whole of each Kingdom, as they don’t make up anything near the 90+% I’d expect. Both Aragon and Castilla included “sub territories” with their own taxation. The rest of the income figures (I’m at work so don’t have the book I was quoting from) were things like sale of offices, the bullion from South America, salt tax, Church income etc. Obviously I don’t know for certain but I’d imagine the headings of Castille and Aragon cover all their sub-territories. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2008, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-spanish-empire/462597/70 "2008-09-12T11:39:34Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > The Spanish Administration doesn’t, perhaps the UN didn’t get the memo. That’s what I thought, too. It seems odd, almost like the UN telling Australia that PNG is still their problem despite the fact Australia bailed from the territory in 1975. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2008, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-spanish-empire/462597/71 "2008-09-12T11:46:48Z")
> [@Illuminatiprimus](#): > > That’s exactly what I meant, and what monarchs felt was their due in the quasi-feudal part of the early modern period (England had this problem in spades too). I’m not saying kings should be able to raise taxes on a whim, but the Hapsburgs had more ability to do it in Castille than they could in any of their other territories. Aye, I always find it kind of interesting that people conflate medieval monarchs with Louis XIV of France so much. The time of the Hapsburgs saw, in many countries, a tremendous shift from having to depend a lot on Parliament to “I am the State.” The power pull had been there all through feudal times (see stories like “the bell of Huesca”, a King of Aragon having the most important nobles executed for treason for opposing him more than he was willing to accept) but the shift went really sideways during those two centuries. ---
**Author:** ![Illuminatiprimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/illuminatiprimus/32/11520_2.png) [@Illuminatiprimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Illuminatiprimus)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2008, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-spanish-empire/462597/72 "2008-09-12T11:54:03Z")
I agree it was quite odd how royal absolutism happened later in Europe’s history. People with less knowledge of history think it’s some kind of smooth continuous upwards progression towards modern democracy when in fact it was anything but (the 17th century being a firm step back when it came to what we consider to be “progress” in a political sense). ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2008, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-spanish-empire/462597/73 "2008-09-12T14:49:28Z")
> [@Illuminatiprimus](#): > > I agree it was quite odd how royal absolutism happened later in Europe’s history. People with less knowledge of history think it’s some kind of smooth continuous upwards progression towards modern democracy when in fact it was anything but (the 17th century being a firm step back when it came to what we consider to be “progress” in a political sense). Yup. Spanish kings preferred dealing with Castile than with Aragon. Castile was one unified kingdom and very much under the King’s control while Aragón was still technically a conglomerate of kingdoms whose Cortes (parliaments) met at one place (often Tarazona) only for convenience but they were still distinct. Contrary to common popular belief the kings of Spain at that time had far from absolute power. They were _very_ limited in what they could do, by law and by custom. It is only with the Bourbons later that Spain slowly drifted towards centralism and a more authoritarian system. Witness the obstacles Philip II had to surmount in trying to judicially try and punish Antonio Perez and in the end Antonio Perez managed to escape to France. At that time the rule of law was far stronger than the king and yet most people today think otherwise. There is a famous formula used in the crowning of the king,0 somewhere in Aragon I believe, which reminded the king he was only primus inter pares and which went something like “we [the nobles] who are worth as much as you, and joined together more than you, swear allegiance to you so long as you respect and abide by the laws, customs and usages of the kingdom”. (Nos, que valemos tanto como vos, y juntos más que vos, os juramos fidelidad etc) ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2008, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-spanish-empire/462597/74 "2008-09-12T15:01:37Z")
Driven by curiosity I looked up the quoted formula and found several variations of it. > [@](#): > > [Historiantes: Fórmulas del Juramento Aragonés en los siglos XVI-XVII](http://historiantes.blogspot.com/2008/02/frmulas-del-juramento-aragons-en-los.html) > > Nos, que valemos tanto como Vos, que no valéis más que Nos, os juramos como Príncipe y heredero, con la condición de que conservéis nuestras leyes y nuestra libertad, y haciéndolo Vos de otra manera, Nos no os juramos" > SORANZO, Pietro\*. Relazione. p. 85. > > - Embajador de Venecia en torno a 1570. > > “Nos que valemos tanto como vos os hacemos nuestro Rey y Señor con tal que nos guardéis nuestros fueros y libertades, y si no, No” > PEREZ, Antonio. Relaciones. Ginebra, 1654. pp. 143-144. > > “Nos que valemos tanto como Vos y podemos mas que Vos, Vos elegimos rey con estas y estas condiciones, entre Vos y Nos, un que manda mas que Vos” > HOTMAN, François. Francogalli. Ginebra, 1573. pp. 85-86. > > “Nos, que cada uno de nosotros somos igual que Vos y todos juntos más que Vos, te hacemos Rey si cumples nuestros fueros y los haces cumplir, si no, no” > BLANCAS, Jerónimo. Coronaciones de los Sereníssimos Reyes de Aragón. 1585. I like the one which says “we who are worth as much as you make you aour king and lord if you will respect our privileges and freedoms and if not, not.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-spanish-empire/462597.md?page=3)