>>212102210
I'm a Greek historian who specializes in Byzantium so I have no dog in this fight, but I'll try to make you understand what the Spanish monarchy was to the best of my ability.

I will post a convo I had with a friend on discord supplemented by a short introduction

All Spanish colonization financing was controlled by german and italian bankers, who also controlled almost all Spanish trade within Iberia and almost all movement of gold from america to europe, the reason being that Charles V had promised them new world gold in exchange for religious war loans in Europe. Spain saw very little new world wealth and very little prosperity reached the common Spaniard, it was all eaten up by bankers in exchange for holy war loans the moment it arrived in Seville.

The idea of Spain was the ideology of a universal multicultural Catholic monarchy that sacrificed everything including the prosperity of Spain itself and basic realpolitik concerns in order to spread Catholicism. This was its undoing.