Imagine that the Spanish starts planting Tobacco in OTL Georgia....how would this colony develop? Would the English accept a border in The Carolinas?
After a certain point, once the Spanish had settled in large enough numbers, wouldn't a Carolinian border be a fiat accompli?
This would take a fairly large divergence in Spanish colonial policy. Settler colonies in Latin America weren't quite the same as the English/British colonies on the East Coast. Most Spanish colonies were really conquests of pre-existing nations, using their social ladders as tools to extract labor for the pursuit of gold and silver. Settler colonies like Argentina began out of necessity: the need for a port out of Paraguay, which was actually settled before Buenos Aires due to the Guarani chiefdoms to be exploited.
There were no complex nation-states or chiefdoms to be exploited in the Southeast; at least, none that survived the plagues and other effects of initial contact. You'd need a Spain that is OK with settling for settling's sake (like England was), or for them to conquer another empire's colony that is built up and profitable enough to consider keeping and Hispanifying. Note that the second scenario never happened OTL either, as opposed to England (New York, Jamaica, Quebec, etc).
See but even then the Spanish did get plantation agriculture and importing slaves to do the work, they could totally develop a systemvery much like the southern british colonies.
This would take a fairly large divergence in Spanish colonial policy. Settler colonies in Latin America weren't quite the same as the English/British colonies on the East Coast. Most Spanish colonies were really conquests of pre-existing nations, using their social ladders as tools to extract labor for the pursuit of gold and silver. Settler colonies like Argentina began out of necessity: the need for a port out of Paraguay, which was actually settled before Buenos Aires due to the Guarani chiefdoms to be exploited.
There were no complex nation-states or chiefdoms to be exploited in the Southeast; at least, none that survived the plagues and other effects of initial contact. You'd need a Spain that is OK with settling for settling's sake (like England was), or for them to conquer another empire's colony that is built up and profitable enough to consider keeping and Hispanifying. Note that the second scenario never happened OTL either, as opposed to England (New York, Jamaica, Quebec, etc).
I think if De Soto wasn't as crazy or if he decided to settle down in Georgia, you would end up with a much more Spanish South East. I think he made good native alliances, and even most of expedition didn't want to go any farther, so if he was less crazy there could definitely be a spanish colony in Georgia or South Carolina.