Spain-US Connection

The groundwork for interstate relations between Spain and the US was laid by the colonization of parts of the Americas by the Hispanic Monarchy. The first settlement in Florida was Spanish, followed by more permanent, larger colonies in New Mexico, California, with a few elsewhere. The earliest Spanish settlements north of Mexico (known then as New Spain) were the results of the same forces that later led the British to come to that area. In order to add a Spanish dimension to the history of the US, the concept of “Spanish borderlands” (referring to the territories of the United States once claimed by Spain) was proposed in 20th-century historiography to nuance the traditional Anglo-centric vision.^[1]

Spain, that provided support to the Thirteen Colonies during the American Revolutionary War against the Kingdom of Great Britain, tacitly recognized the independence of the United States in 1783. The purchase of the Spanish Florida by the US was made effective in 1821. US efforts to buy Cuba in the 1850s failed. When Cuba revolted in the late 19th century American opinion became hostile to Spanish brutality. The Spanish–American War erupted in 1898. The Spanish defeat in the conflict entailed the loss of the last Spanish colonies in the Americas and Southeast Asia, including Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

With the onset of the Cold War the US threw a lifeline to the Franco dictatorship (rather ostracized immediately after World War II), also reaching a deal with Spain to set several military bases in the country in 1953,^[2] of which two of them (Morón and Rota) still are jointly operated by the US.

History of Spanish–American relations has been defined as one of “love and hate”.