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During the 14th century, the Crown of Aragon was a major power in Europe with control over a large part of the Mediterranean. Would it be possible for it to stay separate from the Crown of Castile and to become a great colonial power to rival the British Empire, France and OTL Spain? Of course, in some way an Aragon-wank is the same as a Spain-wank, but I'm interested to see what would happen if Castile and Aragon were competitors and rivals in the New World, India and/or Africa.

One rather obvious way I can think of is to get rid of the Black Death (a POD I seem to have become obsessed with lately), which IOTL hit southern Spain and Italy very hard. In a world where that pandemic never struck, would the Crown of Aragon have the manpower necessary to become an independent colonial power?
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