 The delay enabled Spain to take advantage of experience gained by Britain with the world's first commissioned all-big-gun battleship, HMS Dreadnought, and by the United States with its own new battleship, USS South Carolina. The Spanish Navy was principally concerned with defending its three main naval bases: Ferrol, Cádiz, and Cartagena. Of secondary importance was the need to keep the new battleship design tightly constrained due to the frail Spanish economy and industrial sector. A third constraint was the need to build ships small enough to fit in existing dockyard facilities, since there were insufficient funds to both build larger battleships and to enlarge the navy's dockyards. As a result, the design requirements called for relatively heavy offensive power with minimal range and armor protection. The Navy began discussing the design requirements with Armstrong Whitworth and Vickers in 1907 well before the law was actually passed. On 5 September 1907, Vickers provided a proposed design for a 15,000-ton battleship armed with eight 12-inch guns. This design was the basis for the requirements for the design competition, which was issued on 21 April 1908.
