Could Spain have conquered at least some of the Thirteen Colonies or US states?

Could Spain have conquered some or all of the Thirteen Colonies from Britain or original states from the US?
 
Unlikely unless every early on POD where Spain reverses its decline somehow. Georgia is, of course, the likely candidate. Spain did it to the French Colonialist there a few years earlier than Jamestown. Extremely unlikely after 1776 POD, it would seem.
 
Spain entered into second tier status after the Battle of Rocroi (1643) and the Franco-Spainish War (1635-1659). By that time, it had suffered too many losses to take on the British colonies. Its economy had been eroded by inflation, huge debts from its many wars, its years of grandeur had made them arrogant and non-innovative, and its economy could not compete. Spain had been fighting the Dutch Revolt since 1588, then the French in the Thirty Years War. There are only so many wars a country can handle.

So in the years when the English colonies were most vulnerable (1607 to 1674), it was already pre-occupied with far greater concerns. Afterwards, the dominant threat was France, and it would not make sense for Spain to alienate England (and England might get the better of them anyways). And before this time (pre-1588), there was not enough wealth on the Eastern Seaboard to encourage Spain to settle it. Spain already had too many land claims to settle as it was, and such marginal territories were going to go to someone else. Mexico and Peru were the major sources of wealth in the New World, as well as Spanish rule in the Netherlands. Its going to devote its resources to them.
 
In a very early sense it's possible Spain might do this to Georgia, but it wouldn't get any further than that and its conquest of Georgia on its own would be difficult enough. La Florida by that point was the boodocks of an empire in decline and the only real way to do that would be to get a Cherokee-Spanish alliance to wipe out early Georgia.

Not that the cultural butterflies of *that* for ATL British seaboard colonies wouldn't be HUGE.
 

Delvestius

Banned
Y'know, I bet if Charles V didn't have the Turks to worry about, he could of focused more on his new world empire. Allied with Catholic France, i'm sure they could have ousted the British altogether, splitting ATlantica between them.
 
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