What caused the decline of Spain?

Fat Briton looks pretty guilty. Uncle Joe probably helped

Failure to spend their money in the right places and was no longer able to maintain its status.

Don't even get me started on this subject. I've autistically read nearly everything there is to read on the Siglo de Oro and the decline.

>smug America standing right under the "who killed Spain?" sign with a smile on his face

Same reason ottomans, Portuguese and mughals declined.
>Relying on agriculture and trade for income, instead of production
>Not much military innovation, getting outgunned by your enemies
>Too much big of an empire to control effectively
>Backward ass monarchies
>Rebellions in most of their territories because said empire ruled by backward ass monarchies
>Most of the population is illiterate
This were some of them, I'm pretty sure there were more reasons.

Charles II.

Due to extensive inbreeding he was born with a number of severe birth defects including developmental delay and impotency. Today he would be considered borderline mentally retarded, yet despite this he was made king and given (at least on paper) absolute power, and a beautiful wife. Presumably because of his birth defects he was never able to father any children and he died at 35 without any children.

Without any family the question of who would succeed him had long been troubling to the nations of europe, and on his deathbed Charles declared his grandnephew Philip V Duke of Anjou, should inherit the throne. The problem was that the duke was the grandson of Louis XIV and this meant that Spain and France would from then on be natural allies, and worse he could potentially become king of both Spain (which held a great deal of european territory outside of iberia) AND France. The prospect of this superstate was a truly terrifying one to the English, Austrians, Dutch, and most of the HRE. So on Charles' death they refused to recognize Phillip and shortly afterwards declared war in the hopes of partitioning Spain's empire and removing him from the throne.

This was the war of spanish succession, which raged for 12 years and claimed over half a million lives. It was the beginning of the end for the Spanish Empire.

And to think, there are people who still think that Monarchy is a good form of government after one placed a literal impotent retard on the throne, whose death triggered a massive and ruinous war.

Charles II.

Charles the Second

charles II

Image macro of the thread. Move along everybody.

ignore
@4228543

Good argument there faggot

Who says that I was making the argument?

* or an
for that matter

Charles II was just the start.

The King after him, Phillip V was a French Puppet and fought bloody wars for France where Spain gained not nearly enough for all her bloodshed.

King Ferdinand VI and Charles III managed to stabilize Spain after an awful 50 years or so, just in time for their offspring to run it into the ground.

Charles IV didn't care for matters of the state and instead hunted. Pressure from consequences of the Napoleonic wars forced him to abdicate in favor of his son.

Ferdinand VII got into an argument with his abdicated dad, brought the issue to Napoleon, who canned them both and put his brother on the throne.

Hasburgs inbreeding and Boubons incompetence
Inflation
The eternal frog
The eternal Basque

Spain was ruled by Germans for most of its history.

yea

Spaniards

I was being sarcastic, you dumbass faggot newfag.

The Church. Ad maiorem Dei gloriam

Failure to modernise, and industrialise.

Even until the 50s Spain was mainly an agricultural economy.

>fragmented, uncontrollable empire
>getting into war with nearly everyone (France, England, Ottomans, Sweden, various subject peoples...)
>weak economy, reliance on American silver and gold

*clarification: I meant the 17th century decline.

This is what fucking happened:

The reconquista

And also this fucking retard

You're doing it wrong.

You are also doing it wrong.

So what you're saying is if Phillip V had been more like Charles XIV of Sweden then Spain wouldn't have been a hot mess?

Spain was like a poor person winning the lottery.

debt
infaction
drafts
plagues
droughts
taxes
in the southern half of the country, very uneven distribution of land ownership
expelling the jews and the muslims
very bad luck with the game of dynasties: first, the whole peninsula was not united under the trastamara dynasty in the grandchildren of Isabel and Fernando; second, Spain got the Hapsburgs, their fucking imperial bullshit, and that fucking sentence to death in the low countries; and third, Spain got the Bourbons just when the the Bourbon that Spain got was a whim, and the one that France had whas the overwhelming Louis XIV, so Spain didn't even got a fucking delegation to the peace negotiations of a continental war, and lost all its european posessions and fucking Gibraltar while France lost nothing

books.google.com/books?id=2eW3DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA118&dq=ralph peters buenos aires&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi6vZ3Qg9HZAhUI4IMKHWw_Bg8Q6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=ralph peters buenos aires&f=false

Yeah. Between 60-70% of the economy of colonial Buenos Aires was contraband trade against the rules of the Spanish monopoly. The demand for free trade was one of the main reasons why we were the first to declare independence from Spain and eventually became massive Britboos in the 19th century.

All of the Argentine independence leaders were physiocrats (pro free trade) and massive Francophiles and Anglophiles, while most of the Royalist side were the legal merchants and other authorities that had profited from the Spanish monopoly.

so were the bongs

I should add that this also explains the civil war that followed. The interior cities like Cordoba had benefited from the Spanish monopoly since all legal trade to Buenos Aires had to come by land route from Bolivia and Peru and pass through there. When the monopoly was abolished the interior economies were fucked, while the Atlantic, BA-centered export economy boomed, setting the stage for protectionist Federalists against free trade Unitarians. Eventually free trader ideas won but with the veneer of a Federal Constitution.

tl;dr - Spanish colonial economies were extremely disfunctional. Colonial Buenos Aires was a port city that wasn't allowed to trade by sea (but still did, illegally) whereas much of the rest of the colony depended on a crippling monopoly to exist.

(Last follow-up I promise)

This economic aspect also explains why Peru was a royalist stronghold (they benefitted the most from the monopoly).

>leftoid revisionism

Masonry and the international jewery working together on destroying the last bastion of catholicism and moral rightness

Spain had plenty of precapitalist institutions and by the late XVIII it was the second biggest cotton cloth producer behind the United Kingdom.In fact the entire policy of the UK in the XVIII rely on destroying the Spanish empire and Napoleon did that for them.

The fact the Trastámara dinasty died out

The Eternal Frog

Rocroi ended Spanish dominance in Europe, and Napoleon terminated what was left of Spanish relevance

Only correct answers

Close this thread,

VIVA ESPAÑA
AMERICA REUNIDA

It was full of spanish people.

>Rocroi ended Spanish dominance in Europe
It didn't.That same year the frogs got absolutly BTFO at Tuttligen 4 months later.Rocroi is just Mazarin using propaganda in the right way.The turning point of the 30 years war were the Catalan and Portuguese revolts as the French army was incapable of defeating the full force of the Spanish war machine

>It was full of spanish people.
Castillians are the most heroic people in Europe

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Fire ships

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>Masonry and the international jewery
Thats a strange way of spelling France.

geographical reasons, not a good location for industry

>France was behind Riego,San Martin,Bolivar and Miranda
Nice joke kiddo

romanistik.uni-freiburg.de/raible/Lehre/2006_07/Materialien/1978_Kamen_Decline.pdf

According to this paper, Spain was never that developed. Is it right?

Jesus..

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Bourbons being absolutely retarded. Isabella II pretty much ruined the nation with her liberal corruption and italian fetish.
The only hope's Spain had was if Carlist won any of civil wars they fought, especially the first and second ones.

not treating their colonial subjects on par with mainland spaniards made them lose their empire.

Complete reliance on silver and gold for the economy, so Spain itself never needed to industrialize and innovate.

Paying for every fucking war on the continent, as well. Fighting the Ottomans, Protestants, English and French pretty much nonstop was expensive.

The Louisiana Bankruptcy fiasco really showed how far behind the Spanish were; and The napoleonic wars solidified the collapse.

>The Louisiana Bankruptcy
Wtf are you even talking about

Southern Europe in general was much more backwards than Northern Europe until the 1960s.

Map shows rural vs industrial workers as a (%). Red more industrial workers, green more farmers, as percentage of the workforce.

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España

what a shitty colour gradient
interesting graphs user, thank you

great meme

Sorry, France and England, then.

We put a sick old man out of his misery. If not us, then who?

Too much gold, too many siestas. Degeneracy, in other words.

Plus, English oak trees, essential in the building of small, sea worthy, floating tanks.

English 'privateering'

Literally 1 Spanish convoy was captured in history and it was done by the Dutch not the English

I learned the answer to this question when I was 15, get it together dude