Spanish a: Did you mean...?

A rapier signed by the Spanish swordmaker Juan Martinez in 1580 CE. The handle is decorated with gold, copper wire, wood, and velvet. Toledo, Spain. (Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Battle between Dutch and Spanish ships on the Haarlemmermeer, 26 May 1573, oil on canvas by Hendrik Cornelisz Vroom, c. 1629. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

The Spanish conquistadors might have gained a lasting reputation as the great gold-seekers of history, but they were actually far more successful in acquiring silver. Over 100 tons of gold were extracted from the Americas from 1492 to 1560...

History Of Warfare - The Spanish Armada - Full Documentary The Spanish Armada was an enormous 130-ship naval fleet dispatched by Spain in 1588 as part of a planned invasion of England. Following years of hostilities between Spain and England...

Dig into the era of the Spanish Inquisition, when the Catholic Church was charged with rooting out and punishing heresy. In 1478 CE, Pope Sixtus IV issued a decree authorizing the Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, to root out...

Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1475-1519) was a Spanish conquistador who famously discovered the Pacific Ocean after crossing the isthmus of Panama in 1513. An utterly ruthless adventurer and colonizer, Balboa was as much a danger to his fellow conquistadors...

The fall of Tenochtitlan on 13 August 1521 was a decisive moment in the dramatic collapse of the Aztec empire which had dominated Mesoamerica. Led by Hernán Cortés (1485-1547), the Spanish conquistadors enjoyed superior weapons and tactics...

While there have been pirates and privateers of all nationalities, some Dutch mariners were particularly troublesome in the early modern period, targeting, in particular, the Spanish Main but also shipping in the eastern Atlantic and the...

The two sieges of Cusco in 1536-7 were the last great military actions by the Incas as they tried to reclaim their empire from the Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro (c. 1478-1541). The European cavalry proved all but invincible...

Hernán Cortés (1485-1547) was a Spanish conquistador who led the conquest of the Aztec Empire in Mexico from 1519. Taking the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in 1521, Cortés plundered Mesoamerica as he became the first ruler of the new colony...