DW Español presents a long-form overview of the Spanish Empire, from 1492 until the end of its colonial expansion. The piece organizes the milestones around two constant tensions: the pursuit of wealth and power, and the desire to provide that expansion with moral rules and stable structures. The result is a portrait with light and shade that avoids simplifications.
The starting point is Christopher Columbus's undertaking. The documentary recalls that a commission of experts had advised against his plan for calculation and logistical reasons, but that the Catholic Monarchs supported him by promising new trade routes to Asia. The first voyage culminated in the Bahamas and began a process of exploration and settlement with diverse objectives: profit, evangelization, and political control.
Friction soon arose. Reports of abuse and enslavement in Hispaniola led the Crown to investigate Columbus's actions and withdraw his privileges. The narrative underscores a duality that would permeate the entire empire: while the search for metals and revenues was ongoing, attempts were also made to set legal limits on the treatment of indigenous populations.
In 1511, complaints by Dominican friars about mistreatment led to the first major legislative package: the Laws of Burgos (1512). On paper, they recognized indigenous people as free people and owners of their property, prohibited strenuous labor, and regulated the encomienda system; at the same time, they upheld the idea of a "just" conquest if the evangelizing order was rejected. The contradiction between principles and practice marked that first century.
The piece explains that military victories depended less on the number of European soldiers and more on local alliances. The case of Hernán Cortés illustrates the pattern: with a few hundred Spaniards and tens of thousands of indigenous allies—including Tlaxcalans—he took Tenochtitlán in 1521. The support of interpreters and mediators, such as Malinalli (the Malinche), was decisive in understanding regional politics.
The story also exposes episodes of extreme violence. It cites Nuño de Guzmán's campaign in Nueva Galicia, with slave hunts and exemplary punishments that ended in trials and dismissal. The message is clear: there were serious abuses, sometimes punished, sometimes tolerated, in a war context where massacres were frequent.
In the south, Francisco Pizarro took advantage of the Inca civil war between Atahualpa and Huáscar to gain a foothold. Atahualpa's capture and execution, despite the ransom of gold and silver, symbolizes the combination of negotiation, military surprise, and internal divisions that favored the conquest of Cuzco in 1533. The expansion continued with new courts and viceroyalties.
The Crown attempted to provide an ethical and legal framework for this process. The Valladolid Controversy (1550–1551) pitted the positions of Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda against each other regarding the legitimacy of war and the rights of indigenous people. Previously, the New Laws (1542) had formally abolished indigenous slavery and ordered mass liberations, with economic resistance in mines and on farms.
The documentary also explores a path to integration that often goes unnoticed: education, languages, and racial mixing. Universities and hospitals were founded; Nahuatl and Quechua grammars were written for evangelization and administration; and, from very early on, the Crown promoted mixed marriages. Over time, however, "caste" hierarchies and certificates of purity of blood emerged, making social mobility more rigid.
On the economic front, silver mining and the "royal fifth" financed public works, cities, and salaries in the Americas, and sustained the Monarchy's military power in Europe. But the abundance of the metal also pressured prices on the Peninsula, favored imports over local manufacturing, and coincided with costly wars against powers such as France, England, and the Ottoman Empire. There were sovereign bankruptcies even during the heyday of Philip II.
During the 18th century, under the Bourbons, attempts were made to recentralize and modernize: new viceroyalties were created (such as New Granada and Río de la Plata), administrative reforms were implemented, and scientific and health initiatives were promoted. The Philanthropic Vaccine Expedition (1803–1810) brought smallpox inoculations to the Americas and the Philippines, an unusual logistical effort for the time that reduced mortality and sought to protect the colonial economy.
Even so, geopolitical erosion accelerated. The Napoleonic occupation left Spain unable to sustain its transatlantic network; the wars of independence followed, and later, the 1898 defeat by the United States, with the loss of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. It was the turning point that consolidated the end of the overseas empire.
The documentary's closing remarks return to the legacy. Beyond the institutional and economic balance, it highlights the survival of a cultural space shared by hundreds of millions of Spanish speakers and a network of literary, legal, and urban references that connect both sides of the Atlantic. A complex outcome: progress and atrocities, integration and conflict, whose imprint remains present in Ibero-American politics and society.
In short, DW proposes reading the history of the Spanish Empire as a laboratory of material ambitions and normative pursuits that rarely coincided. Expansion generated wealth and structures; it also left wounds and hierarchies. The decline was a response to fiscal imbalances, the pressures of war, and changes in the global balance. Understanding this trajectory, the piece suggests, helps explain both the subsequent fragmentation and the continued existence of a common cultural heritage.