ABSTRACT
Paradoxically, the nation that more than any other inaugurated the modern age did not long enjoy the fruits of this era but fell rapidly into economic and political decline. Spain is closely linked to the discovery of North and Central America, to the ensuing importation of colonial products, and, above all, to the increase of precious metal in Europe. But Spain’s brief period of unprecedented expansion was badly mismanaged; neither the court nor the nobility recognized that only the creation of strong national industries and a firmly centralized government could guarantee her continuance as a major world power. The ruling strata had developed a type of economic parasitism which found ample nourishment in the wealth of the old and new worlds. But with the devaluation of precious metals, what had for a brief period been a comfortable over-abundance for parasites now became a ruinous overabundance of parasites.
