Seville lay in the southern Iberian Peninsula, in the lower valley of the Guadalquivir River, a little over a hundred kilometers south of the Bay of Cádiz. Its population numbered several hundred thousand.
The Guadalquivir flowed right through the city, whose buildings still retained the style of the Moorish era. The land here was broad and flat, with an average elevation of less than a hundred meters. Most of it consisted of fertile alluvial plains, making it highly suitable for agriculture.
However, the Spanish had no interest in developing agriculture here!
After all, compared with the immense profits of maritime trade, agriculture offered pitifully low returns...
So this coastal city—the only one with an inland river port, situated at the Mediterranean's outlet and close to the Strait of Gibraltar—naturally used its geographical advantages to develop shipbuilding, transportation, logistics, commercial trade, and other industries vital to Spain's national power and economic foundations.
Especially after Columbus discovered the New World, the city established the "House of Trade of the Indies" (that is, the New World of the Americas), monopolizing Spain's overseas trade—and nearly all of Europe's, particularly trade with the Americas. Seville swiftly became Europe's most prosperous commercial port and city.
Naturally, the other European nations were green with envy.
But there was nothing they could do. The Kingdom of Spain was now Europe's mightiest maritime power. Its invincible fleet could fight the Netherlands, Austria, Britain, the Ottoman Empire, and other European powers on land and sea, in Europe and across the New World, without giving ground.
This was the age of the Spanish Armada. Other countries, Britain and France among them, might be jealous, but all they could do was resort to underhanded tricks in private, gradually nibbling away at Spain's overseas colonies. None dared casually provoke the Spanish.
Of course,