Spanish Crown in the context of "Francisco Goya"

The Manila galleon (Spanish: Galeón de Manila; Tagalog: Galeon ng Maynila) are the Spanish trading ships that linked the Philippines in the Spanish East Indies to Mexico (New Spain), across the Pacific Ocean. The ships made one or two round-trip voyages per year between the ports of Manila and Acapulco from the late 16th to early 19th century. The term "Manila galleon" can also mean the trade route itself between Manila and Acapulco that was operational from 1565 to 1815.

The Manila galleon trade route was inaugurated in 1565 after the Augustinian friar and navigator Andrés de Urdaneta pioneered the tornaviaje or return route from the Philippines to Mexico. Urdaneta and Alonso de Arellano made the first successful round trips that year, by taking advantage of the Kuroshio Current. The galleons set sail from Cavite, in Manila Bay, at the end of June or the first week of July, sailing through the northern Pacific and reaching Acapulco in March to April of the next calendar year. The return route from Acapulco passes through lower latitudes closer to the equator, stopping over in the Marianas, then sailing onwards through the San Bernardino Strait off Cape Espiritu Santo in Samar and then to Manila Bay and anchoring again off Cavite by June or July. The trade using "Urdaneta's route" lasted until 1815, when the Mexican War of Independence broke out. The majority of these galleons were built and loaded in shipyards in Cavite, utilizing native hardwoods like the Philippine teak, with sails produced in Ilocos, and with the rigging and cordage made from salt-resistant Manila hemp. The vast majority of the galleon's crew consisted of Filipino natives; many of whom were farmers, street children, or vagrants press-ganged into service as sailors. The officers and other skilled crew were usually Spaniards (a high percentage of whom were of Basque descent). The galleons were state vessels and thus the cost of their construction and upkeep was borne by the Spanish Crown.

The New Kingdom of Granada (Spanish: Nuevo Reino de Granada), or Kingdom of New Granada, was the name given to a group of colonial-era Spanish ultramarine provinces in northern South America governed by the president of the Real Audiencia of Santa Fe, an area corresponding mainly to modern-day Colombia. The conquistadors originally organized it as a province with a Real Audiencia within the Viceroyalty of Peru and thus having a certain level of independence from it. The audiencia was established by the crown in 1549.

Later, the kingdom would become the Viceroyalty of New Granada, first in 1717, and permanently in 1739. After several attempts to set up independent states in the 1810s, the kingdom and the viceroyalty ceased to exist altogether around 1819 with the establishment of the first Republic of Colombia.

The Spanish West Indies, Spanish Caribbean or the Spanish Antilles (also known as "Las Antillas Occidentales" or simply "Las Antillas Españolas" in Spanish) were Spanish territories in the Caribbean. In terms of governance of the Spanish Empire, The Indies was the designation for all its overseas territories and was overseen by the Council of the Indies, founded in 1524 and based in Spain. When the Crown established the Viceroyalty of New Spain in 1535, the islands of the Caribbean came under its jurisdiction.

The islands ruled by Spain were chiefly the Greater Antilles: Hispaniola (including modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Cuba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. The majority of the Taíno, the indigenous populations on these islands, had died out or had mixed with the European colonizers by 1520. Spain also claimed the Lesser Antilles including Martinica, but these smaller islands remained largely independent until they were seized or ceded to other European powers as a result of war, or diplomatic agreements during the 17th and 18th centuries.

The Spanish Netherlands (Spanish: Países Bajos Españoles; Dutch: Spaanse Nederlanden; French: Pays-Bas espagnols; German: Spanische Niederlande; historically in Spanish: Flandes, the name "Flanders" was used as a pars pro toto) were a collection of States of the Holy Roman Empire in the Low Countries, held in personal union by the Spanish Habsburgs, but not annexed to the Spanish Crown, thus encompassing the second period in history of the Habsburg Netherlands, that lasted from 1556 to 1714. This region comprised most of the modern states of Belgium and Luxembourg, as well as parts of northern France, the southern Netherlands, and western Germany, with the capital being Brussels. The Army of Flanders was given the task of defending the territory.

The Imperial fiefs in the former Burgundian Netherlands had been inherited by the House of Habsburg from the extinct House of Valois-Burgundy upon the death of Mary of Burgundy in 1482. The Seventeen Provinces formed the core of the Habsburg Netherlands, which passed to the Spanish Habsburgs upon the abdication of Emperor Charles V in 1556. Spanish hegemony in Netherlands was solidified following their victory in the Fall of Antwerp during the Eighty Years' War. When part of the Netherlands separated to form the autonomous Dutch Republic in 1581, the remainder of the area stayed under Spanish rule until the War of the Spanish Succession.

The Asiento de Negros (lit. 'agreement of blacks') was a monopoly contract between the Spanish Crown and various merchants for the right to provide enslaved Africans to colonies in the Spanish Americas. The Spanish Empire rarely engaged in the transatlantic slave trade directly from Africa itself, choosing instead to contract out the importation to foreign merchants from nations more prominent in that part of the world, typically Portuguese and Genoese, but later the Dutch, French, and British. The Asiento did not concern French or British Caribbean, or Brazil, but only Spanish America.

The 1479 Treaty of Alcáçovas divided the Atlantic Ocean and other parts of the globe into two zones of influence, Spanish and Portuguese. The Spanish acquired the west side, washing South America and the West Indies, whilst the Portuguese obtained the east side, washing the west coast of Africa – and also the Indian Ocean beyond. The Spanish relied on enslaved African labourers to support their American colonial project, but now lacked any trading or territorial foothold in West Africa, the principal source of slave labour. The Spanish relied on Portuguese slave traders to fill their requirements. The contract was usually obtained by foreign merchant banks that cooperated with local or foreign traders, that specialized in shipping. Different organisations and individuals would bid for the right to hold the asiento.

The Order of Santiago (/ˌsɒntiˈɑːɡoʊ/; Spanish: Orden de Santiago [sanˈtjaɣo]) is a religious and military order founded in the 12th century. It owes its name to the patron saint of Spain, Santiago (St. James the Greater). Its initial objective was to protect the pilgrims on the Way of St. James, to defend Christendom and to remove the Muslim Moors from the Iberian Peninsula with the Reconquista. Entrance was not restricted to nobility of Spain exclusively, and some members have been Catholic Europeans from other parts of Europe. The Order's insignia is particularly recognisable and abundant in Western art.

With the culmination of the Reconquista and the death of the Grand Master Alonso de Cárdenas, the Catholic Monarchs incorporated the Order into the Spanish Crown, and the Pope Adrian VI forever united the office of Grand Master of Santiago to the Crown in 1523.