page_title: Nicaragua–Spain relations
section_title: Spanish colonization
hierarchical_section_title: Nicaragua–Spain relations / History / Spanish colonization
caption_attribution_description: English: El Castillo, Río San Juan department of Nicaragua, 2011.
context_page_description: Nicaragua–Spain relations refers to the diplomatic relations between Nicaragua and Spain. Both nations are members of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language and the Organization of Ibero-American States.
context_section_description: In September 1502, explorer Christopher Columbus arrived to eastern Nicaragua on his fourth voyage to the Americas. In 1522, Spanish conquistador Gil González Dávila arrived to Nicaragua and claimed the territory for Spain. Gil González Dávila named the territory after a chief named Nicarao and combined the name for the Spanish word for water (Agua). In 1524, Spanish conquistador Francisco Hernández de Córdoba founded the first Spanish settlements of Granada and León.
  As a result of the Spanish invasion, the native population drastically fell. Within three decades an estimated native population of one million plummeted to a few tens of thousands, as approximately half of the natives died of contagious diseases originally from Europe, and most of the rest were made to work in forced labor in other New World Spanish colonies.
  The territory of Nicaragua soon officially became part of the Spanish Empire under the Viceroy of New Spain based in Mexico City and administered by the Captaincy General of Guatemala based in Santiago de Guatemala. For most of Spanish colonization, the territory was mostly neglected. In 1740, Great Britain took over the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua and held it until 1786.
caption: Spanish Fortress of the Immaculate Conception built in 1673 in El Castillo, Nicaragua.
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