How is it that Spain never developed a Commonwealth type structure like the UK?

They had a very clear structure: murder, infect, and rape everything in sight and then steal all the gold.

The Spanish Civil War and 40 years of a military dictator. Franco kept Spain isolated.

But if they were going to have that structure, it would've started well before Franco.

Spain didn't give up its colonies without a fight. Simon Bolivar was not "commonwealthing" with any peninsulares.

The interesting thing is that the newly independent countries of South America actually did the work of extending Spanish culture into the interior in a systematic way that never happened under Spain.

Spain couldn't hold Portugal, they had no hope of holding a sparsely settled colonies.

The French don't have anything like the Commonwealth. They tried with the French Union, then the French Community but both failed, other than a few colonies like Senegal. Now they have a language, cultural exchange thing called Francophonie. Even that is full of non French speaking areas and the problem is the French have a French Language Board which seeks to "protect" the language and keep it French, (By that they mean Paris-French) only.

The British Commonwealth is untied by a monarch, though most no longer recognize her as their head of state, but it was a strong trade, historical union, not based on English.

Furthermore all of the Spanish colonies in America, saw far more trade with the USA and Britain even when they were ruled by Spain.

Same question for Portugal and Netherlands.

Even after the US became independent, it still had strong ties to Britain. I always thought that was interesting.

[quote]Same question for Portugal and Netherlands.

We have Indonesian rijsttafel and Surinaamse roti for delivery and a fun Zomercarnaval for all the Antilleans in Rotterdam. And of course we helped invent apartheid. So think of us as a mini-Commonwealth!

r7 Well, except for that nasty bit of business around 1812.

r9 that didn't really alter the relationship. The US and Britain were still intertwined regardless.

The Spanish colonists intermixed with the locals. The British colonists did not. The subsequent generations in Latin America did not look upon Spain in the same was the British colonies looked upon Britain.

A little thing called The United States came in. The colonies traded with the US over Spain that left them poor and unstructured.

However, if you notice Spain is starting to creep in into Latin America again. Watch how in a few decades Spain will rip those benefits.

R6: Portugal was isolated under the Salazar dictatorship. Same thing as Franco. And Netherlands only ever really had some islands in the Caribbean, which they still have, and Indonesia, who threw the Dutch out as soon as they could.

Why would Spain want to take credit for ... that. Nightmare countries.🤮

Cf. the UK, which created Canada, Australia, New Zealand. And America (kind of).

Spanish-speaking countries are improving and are better than French ones.

You really have to hand it to the British, they created colonies in the New World (and the Pacific) that to this day are first-world, functional democracies with a very high standard of living. The Spanish New World countries are all chaotic shitboxes, except for Argentina.

The Spanish empire fell apart long before the modern idea of the Commonwealth was invented. The dismantling of the British empire was an ugly, messy affair. It's not like the British empire was any better than any other empire. I haven't studied this topic but according to Wikipedia the Commonwealth came together in 1949 just as the Cold War was intensifying. The UN was founded in 1945 and NATO also in 1949. It probably had a lot to do with the Cold War and optimism about supranational organizations. It's not like there was nostgalia for British rule at the time-- lots of countries were fighting tooth and nail for independence.

In the sparsely populated regions, the British encouraged settlement of their newly acquired lands, by middle class farmers, merchants, artisans, tradesmen, indentured servants, etc., and permitted them to establish local governments and representative assemblies that had a great deal of autonomy to conduct trade and establish laws and treaties. When it came time for independence, many of these newly formed countries had maintained benign relations with the Crown and chose to remain Crown subjects. The native peoples were weakened, marginalized, and their numbers diminished so that they weren't a significant force to reckon with. Obviously, in densely populated regions, like the Indian subcontinent, things worked out a little differently.

The Spanish, initially, were more interested in conquest and expansion of Empire for power, influence, riches, and the souls of man. They sent conquistadors, soldiers and missionaries who subjugated the local populace and turned them into good Catholics. They also fornicated with them and after several hundred years, significant criollo and mestizo populations arose that were constantly at odds with the peninsulare ruling class. The Spanish Crown retaliated with oppressive and restrictive measures to keep them in check. When Napolean conquered Spain 1808, it destablized the Crown's influence on her colonies, and many of the colonists were quick to pick up arms in revolution. What emerged in the aftermath were new nations that had little to no allegiance to the Spanish Crown.

[quote]How is it that Spain never developed a Commonwealth type structure

Because we're not common, like those Brits who desecrate our beaches.

The Spanish sent settlers to the Americas. So did the British. Then in the late 19th century imperialism changed in a big way. That is when the European powers and Japan began to take over Africa and Asia. The British (and the French and so on) wanted to send settlers to its tropical colonies but migrants continued to go to North America and Austiralia. They never drew large numbers of permanent settlers and consequently are known as colonies of occupation (as opposed to the earlier colonies of settlement).

Japan is something of an anomaly because large numbers of middle class Japanese actually moved to Korea and Manchuria. That never happened with India or Africa because Britain had more attractive options in North America, where the culture and climate was more similar to what migrants were leaving behind.

Espana still does have a monarchy.

Mexico revolted and overthrew their Spanish overlords.

US something Cuba and Phillipines.

We had Cuba, but had to relinquish it. We had Puerto Rico, Guam and The Philippines, but had to give up control of them to the United States.

Well, for that matter, you also had California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, R23.

Too bad Spain didn't keep Puerto Rico. What a mistake that was.

Spain was a poor country that couldn't do a whole lot to help its former colonies, many of whom, like early 1900s Argentina, were in much better shape financially.

The UK and France, OTOH....

[quote] The British Commonwealth is untied by a monarch

Interesting Freudian slip, R5!

Is there any way we can give Texas, Arizona and Florida back to Spain?

Spain doesn’t have a commonwealth because they didn’t hang onto their empire. One by one their colonies either threw them out or were taken away from them by other nations.

That’s because Spain had treated its colonies with cruelty and arrogance, and then began circling the drain in the middle of the 17th century. So the colonies mostly didn’t want to stay in association, and Spain wasn’t really strong enough to keep them in.

They did hold onto the ramshackle semblance of an empire until the late 19th century in Southeast Asia and the Caribbean, and then some holdings in Africa, but nothing to speak of, compared to the British and French colonial holdings.

Let's not forget Italy's empire!