Spanish colonization

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived in America, on the island of San Salvador, located in the Lucayan archipelago,[note 1] actually believing that he had reached India.

On October 28, 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived at the island of Cuba, which at that time had been given the name of Juana Island, being the second island discovered by Columbus on his first voyage.

On December 5, 1492, Columbus arrived on the island of Hispaniola, currently divided into two countries (the Dominican Republic and Haiti), and formed there the first European colony in the New World.

Castilian expansion westwards produced tensions with Portugal, with both kingdoms asking for the mediation of the Pope. By the Inter Caetera bull of 1493, Pope Alexander VI delimited the area of ​​influence that each kingdom could claim over the other, with a line from pole to pole situated 100 leagues west of the Azores. Shortly afterwards, the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 moved the border line to 370 leagues west of Cape Verde, thus opening up a wide area to the east of South America for Portuguese expansion, which would later be known as Brazil.

October 28, 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived on the island of Cuba

The Spanish conquest of America was the process by which an administration was established in the New World that was intended to be an imitation or duplicate of the contemporary peninsular administration.[2] This period extended from October 12, 1492, the day of the discovery of America, until August 13, 1898, when a formal act of lowering the Spanish flag was held in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in compliance with the Washington Peace Protocol signed the previous day with the United States. The main motivations for the expansion of the Crown of Castile were profit through the extraction of resources and the spread of Catholicism through the conversions of indigenous populations.[3]