12/02/2025
When Columbus reached the Bahamas in 1492, Spain didnât yet know it had stumbled onto a continent. But within a single generation, between about 1519 and 1540, an entire overseas empire exploded into existenceâfrom Mexico to Peruâon the spears and obsessions of a few thousand men history calls conquistadors.
They were not Spainâs great lords. The first waves who sailed west were mostly young men from Aragon and Castile, often minor nobles or simple commoners with basic military experience. Spain followed the law of primogeniture: almost everything went to the eldest son. Younger brothers got a sword, a good family nameâand no land, no income, and no real future.
So they gambled. Men like HernĂĄn CortĂ©s, the son of impoverished hidalgos, saw America as a wild, dangerous shortcut to status they could never earn at home. If they stayed in Spain, they would grow old in someone elseâs shadow. If they crossed the ocean, they might die anonymous on a beachâor come back with a title, a coat of arms and chests of silver.
Spanish culture fed this mindset. The ideal man was the hidalgo: proud, obsessed with honor, scornful of manual labor, believing true wealth should be taken by courage and steel, not by plows and ledgers. Medieval tales of knights and reconquista heroes filled their heads. The New World looked like the perfect stage to live those stories, with real kingdoms and real gold at the end of the road.
Conquistadors were warriors, but they were also entrepreneurs. Their real goal was enrichment and elevation. They dreamed of encomiendasâgrants of land and Indigenous laborâof being called âDon,â of founding dynasties where they would finally be the ones at the top. Every expedition was a private business deal: investors, captains, and ordinary soldiers who signed up in exchange for a share of whatever could be seized.
This hunger drove them across jungles, mountains, and deserts, often at a horrifying cost to Indigenous peoples. But it also explains their ferocity and their refusal to quit. For many conquistadors, retreat meant more than failureâit meant going back to Spain as nobodies. Better to risk death in a canyon in Mexico than die quietly in a village where no one remembered your name.