Kingdom of Spain

The **Kingdom of Spain** (Spanish: *Reino de España*), or **Spain**, is a sovereign country in Western Europe, with archipelagos and territories in the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, the Caribbean Sea and Southeastern Asia, aswell as colonial possessions in Africa. Spain's mainland is bordered to the north by France, to the west by Portugal, and to the south by the British colony of Gibraltar.

## History

### Revolutionary Ages and Fernandine Era (1775-1831)

Beginning in 1776, Spain played an important role in the American Revolutionary War and the independence of the United States, at first by smuggling equipment to rebel lines. However, it wasn't until final preparatives in 1779 that it officialy declared war on Great Britain as an ally of France, reconquering Menorca and Florida, and providing financial aid for the final Siege of Yorktown in 1781 with a collection of gold and silver in Havana.

In 1788, Charles III died and was succeeded by his son, the reactionary Charles IV, who quickly started reverting many of his father's reforms. In 1793, Spain went to war against the revolutionary new French Republic as a member of the first Coalition. The subsequent War of the Pyrenees polarised the country in a reaction against the gallicised elites and following a disastrous series of defeats which made Spain sign an armistice with France, became a French ally in 1795, an action which was used by the British to declare war on Spain and launch a series of attacks on the Canaries, Puerto Rico, and Trinidad, being repelled in the former two but occupying the later until 1805. Napoleon convinced king Charles to sign the Treaty of Fontainebleau in October of 1807, allowing for free passage of French troops through Spain into Portugal and the Franco-Spanish forces invaded Portugal in the same year. After Portugal fell, Spain's government, led by the utterly incompetent and power-hungry Manuel Godoy didn't realise in time that the French were actually invading Spain. Charles IV realised it and tried to make a run for the Americas, being stopped by his son Ferdinand at Aranjuez. Ferdinand launched a coup d'état and forced his father to abdicate the throne on him, with Godoy being executed.

Spain had collapsed in virtual anarchy, and Ferdinand rode to Madrid hoping for the French to accept him as a king. Napoleon, sensing an opportunity to get rid of both monarchs at the same time, called them both to Bayonne, where he forced Ferdinand to abdicate to his father Charles, and then Charles was forced to abdicate to Napoleon, who passed the title to his brother Joseph. French troops in Spain got order to kidnap the rest of the Royal Family from the Palace, but upon using brute force to take away the fourteen year-old infante Francisco de Paula, the citizens of Madrid rebelled against Murat's garrison, commencing a series of uprisings through all Spain, commencing the Spanish War of Independence against the French occupation forces.

After a major French offensive and a series of defeats, the Spanish Army and guerrilla groups, assisted by a British expeditionary force, managed to defeat the French out of Spain and reconquer Spanish territory, and by late 1810 Spain was free of French presence. Napoleon freed Ferdinand with the hopes that he could negotiate Spain's exit from the war. Ferdinand VII, as an absolutist, forced the Supreme Central Junta that had ruled in his absence to return all power to him, and he reigned with an iron fist that would lead to the outbreak of rebellions in the American possessions since 1811. By 1816, through a series of expeditions that had decapitated the rebel governments in Mexico, New Granada, and Rio de la Plata, the Spanish almost defeated the separatist movements. However, that same year the monarch suffered a riding accident, which left him incapacitated and weak for some time, used by liberal conspirators led by general Espoz y Mina to launch a coup d'état in 1817 proclaiming a constitutional government which established civil rights, free press, and liberty of religion, which Ferdinand was forced to sign. This caused a civil war amidst the Spanish troops in the Americas, who had been split into liberals and absolutists, a harsh setback which reactivated the force of the independentist movements who over the course of the next year pushed the Spaniards out of New Granada, Venezuela, and Chile, while in New Spain the mostly conservative royalists, disgusted by the new liberal government, deserted en-masse to the forces of the Mexican Republic after a compromise was made, and by 1819 only Veracruz remained in Spanish hands.

After Ferdinand VII and a large part of the army, whose opinion turned against the liberal government after the disasters in America, launched a counter-coup which successfully overthrew Espoz y Mina's government in 1818, Ferdinand started a brutal repression against liberals, with the leaders of the movement either fleeing or being executed. In response to this, Rafael del Riego, in charge of the Government of Montevideo, who had come into contact with freemasonry and had joined the Lautaro Lodge, responsible for most of the independentist movements in Rio de la Plata, declared his rebellion against the King and proclaimed the independence of the Oriental Republic, with the rest of the Viceroyalty collapsing into civil war and warlords who fought for control of the territory. By 1826, Spain had lost two thirds of the Americas; Guatemala and the Antilles had remained loyal to the crown and had suffered no uprisings, while in Peru and Charcas the Royalists had repelled the independentists and a Platine invasion. Spain remained unstable throughout the last years of Ferdinand's reign, with small uprisings every year and a national debt of 3 million reales.

## Overseas Empire

Spanish territory also includes a large number of overseas territories, domains, dependencies and colonies, which together are known as the Spanish Empire.
These include the Canary Islands off the African coast, a number of archipelagos in Asia and Oceania, and a major overseas empire in the Americas:

In the Caribbean Sea, it holds sovereignty over the island of Puerto Rico, the eastern territory of Florida, the eastern half of the island Hispaniola, known as Santo Domingo, and most importantly, the island of Cuba, often called "The Jewel of the Spanish Crown ". Spain maintains economic supremacy in the region, rivaling the United Kingdom in military presence and political influence. Likewise, in the American continent, the Kingdom of Guatemala, and the Kingdom of Peru and the adjacent territories of Chiloé and Rapanuí are Spanish crown dominions, constituting a territory with a high degree of autonomy.

The Philippine archipelago and the Oceanian territories, whose settlement is controlled by the Real Sociedad de Asentamiento del Pacífico (RSAP) are ruled from Manila as the Captaincy General of the Philippines, while the Sultanate of Sulu and the Kingdom of Tonkin are Spanish protectorates in Southeast Asia. Likewise, Spain has a series of dependencies and colonial territories across Africa, of which the most important is the Sultanate of Morocco. Other African possessions include the Spanish Guinea and the Captaincy General of Eritrea.