Spanish Navigations and the Treaty of Tordesillas
While the Portuguese explored the African coast heading towards the Indies, the Spaniards fought to reconquer their territories in the Iberian peninsula lost to the Arabs. The kingdom of Spain was slow to be formed by the prolonged struggle between the Arabs and the Spaniards and was only formed after the marriage between the Catholic kings Ferdinand (from the Kingdom of Aragon) and Isabel (from the Kingdom of Castile) in 1469.
Ferdinand and Isabella fought the Arabs and in 1492 expelled them from the Iberian Peninsula. From then on, Spain was able to launch itself into the Great Navigations by financing the project of the Genoese navigator Christopher Columbus. Columbus' objective was to reach the East by sailing towards the West, knowing that the Earth is rounded and reached the Indies going around the world. He always sailed to the west and on October 12 he docked in the Bahamas where he found a new continent for Europeans:America.
Columbus thought he had arrived in the Indies calling the people he found there Indians. He made four trips to America. He was in present-day Santo Domingo, Cuba and Jamaica where he stayed for a year. He died not knowing that he had discovered a continent that was called America in honor of the navigator, mathematician and astronomer Amerigo Vespucci who undid Columbus' mistake by claiming the existence of a great land in the middle of the Atlantic.
As soon as the news of the discovery reached Europe, the kings of Spain and Portugal began to dispute among themselves the possession of the lands, provoking an armed conflict. Portugal and Spain then signed in 1494 an agreement known as the Treaty of Todesillas, which determined the division of lands belonging to Spain to the west and Portugal to the east.
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