What if they don't make it in the 1st place, the natives kill or they don't make it back?
Then there's nothing in the way of the Taino achieving their ultimate ambition of conquering the whole of Europe.
What would be more interesting is if their ships shipwreck off the coast of some Antilles island. Once they come ashore they kill the local man and marry the remaining women creating some hybrid culture. Maybe they Vikingize and rob other islands of their wealth and women. When the Europeans finally come to this island (hopefully as late as possible) they will find one interesting society.
Although it could be possible to Europe Columbus still didn't make it and Columbus not making it from a European point of view is the focus of the thread.
The Columbus' expedition becomes one of the great controversies of history until at some point in the 20th century remains of a settlement or a ship are found, sort of like Leif Erickson's settlement being discovered in the 1960s.
Then there is a whole bunch of back and forth over who the "real discoverer" of America was with the Italians and Spanish both trying to claim credit for Columbus' legacy.
In the early 21st Century, the whole issue of what would have happened if Columbus had made it back becomes a favorite topic of nerds who are obsessed with alternate history. On alternate history discussion boards it becomes one of the most hotly debated topics along with - What if the Germans had invaded England in 1940?, What if the Confederates had won the Civil War?, What if the Germans had not invaded Belgium in 1914?, and What if the Japanese had not bombed Pearl Harbor?
In all seriousness what might happen is a severely delayed colonization. There's a good chance the Portuguese were just seeing what was on their side of the line the Pope divided the world into for theirs and Spain's colonization efforts. So with Colon's death, they might not bother with veering so wildly far out west when they had a perfectly good plotted route hugging Africa's coasts. There's still all the fishing action in the north Atlantic, which might stumble across some Natives eventually, but without knowledge of the big 'empires of gold' on the mainland, there will also be no incentive to explore further for quite some time. Same goes for even the discovery of the Brazilian coast. It will just be a place of "primitives" and either jungle or forests with no real value (well, Brazilwood could would fetch a price, but it still wasn't the same draw as the potential loot of Mesoamerica and the Andes possessed, even in OTL).
Eventually some white dude will stumble across the Caribbean, but it could be decades later since more efforts will be put on trying to break Portugal's monopoly over trade to the Indian Ocean. Could lead to quite a scramble over Africa's coasts, and the potential for some interesting alliances with African and Asian powers to do so.
Also, if the Euros are coming in from the periphery, it might buy the big indigenous powers more time to adapt to these interlopers, and even play them against each other; or complicate any conquest to severely alter its outcome. Remember the fall of the Aztecs and Inka was often through impeccable timing, luck, and internal divisions.
Might England or France search around North America to find routes west to get in on the trade in Asia?
What would be more interesting is if their ships shipwreck off the coast of some Antilles island. Once they come ashore they kill the local man and marry the remaining women creating some hybrid culture. Maybe they Vikingize and rob other islands of their wealth and women. When the Europeans finally come to this island (hopefully as late as possible) they will find one interesting society.
Might England or France search around North America to find routes west to get in on the trade in Asia?
Someone did that in a timeline called the Horse Plague. It was pretty cool but the author never finished it and left us hanging. Of course a real world counterpart would be a society similar to Pitcairn Island, only made up of the descendants of Spanish sailors and Taino women. Depending on the Antilles island, they would be cut off from further European contact for a decade, maybe two. Pitcairn Island was bereft with alcoholism, sexual abuse and disease so the same could be said for your hypothetical mestizo society. You might even have the women conspiring to kill all the Spanish men (not that I would blame them for it) and use their ships to flee back to their homes like the Polynesian women attempted to do with the British sailors.
The best case example is that someone friendly finds this colony and brings the inhabitants back to the motherland or resettling them somewhere else like the British did with the Pitcairn Islanders, offering them a home in Norfolk. The island would be claimed but since there are no islanders to rape and pillage of their gold (and no prior knowledge of the richer civilizations of Mesoamerica and the Andes), it'll have little attention. Worst possible result is that either the women kill all the men and flee, leaving the colony abandoned or the Caribs raid the island and murder all the men, enslaving the women and taking the weapons of the Spanish.
Just like Pitcairn this makes a wonderfull scenario for a movie
How men did Columbus his crew have? How many would surive shipwreck and how many natives are there? This could all influence the scenario. I will look it up when I am at home and create some scenario out of it.
In all seriousness what might happen is a severely delayed colonization.
Eventually, but with Colombus's example of proving to be fatal they might hesitate for a bit, especially with a route the Portuguese have already scouted.
Outside the people in the town the fleet sailed from, and the king's court, how widely was the Columbus expedition known about before it happened? After they came back how long did it take to be news outside Spain?
It might delay it slightly but I doubt by more than a decade or so at the maximum. Look at the sheer effort that Europe put into finding new routes to Asia. It would only be a few years before some other European decided to try. Columbus was the first expedition to the Americas, not the instigator of the age of exploration that led to their discovery. After all the Americas were initially seen in large part as an obstacle to overcome on the quest for a route to China and India.