ABSTRACT
The last years of the fifteenth century and the first of the sixteenth witnessed the rise of a new power in Europe, one that would show itself capable of even more radical transformation in subsequent decades. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, political competition gave rise, among other things, to a political system that incorporated several smaller powers under the leadership of the Spanish kingdoms. New rivals and old ones consolidated themselves and challenged the supremacy of the Spanish monarchy as the main political power, eventually displacing it after 1635. Most of the political strategies pursued by the Spanish monarchy in the 1520s and in the years between 1559 to 1578 were a consequence of the twin menace of France and the Ottoman Empire. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the expansion of the Protestant Reformation and the tensions generated by the growing fiscal demands of the monarchies had weakened the internal stability of the states.
