OOC: Big POD is that John of Asturias survives to be king and have a surviving line, at least for a few generations, and one of these kings decides that Protestantism and Judaism aren't entirely awful, and that the toleration is likely best for Spain, made more notable by the relative religious peace of the reconquista
IC:
OTL, The Spanish Empire was the largest force on earth, and still remains a massive geopolitical player, with dominion spreading from the southern half of Orejon to the Tierra del Fuego, swaths of Indochina and Malaya, and most of northwest Africa and the Costa de Swahili.
Honestly much of Spain's luck stems from Carlos II de Trastamara's Edict de Madrid, stating that people of all Christian denominations and Judaism were considered equal to catholics, in wake of the protestant reformation. While there were problems with native converts being unofficial second class citizens for a while, this was still better than Britain and France and turned 'Spanish' from a term noting origin in the Iberian peninsula, to a term noting the loyalty to the crown. This created a distinct population influx and brought some of the first modern economic theorists to Spain.
Spain also remained neutral during the seven years war, while France and Britain were duking it out across the seas. While this limited their gains during the first decades of the eighteenth century, it let them gain more power and conquer the British Louisiana territory during the American Revolution.
Your job is to prevent Spain's meteoric rise, or to make it fall
IC:
OTL, The Spanish Empire was the largest force on earth, and still remains a massive geopolitical player, with dominion spreading from the southern half of Orejon to the Tierra del Fuego, swaths of Indochina and Malaya, and most of northwest Africa and the Costa de Swahili.
Honestly much of Spain's luck stems from Carlos II de Trastamara's Edict de Madrid, stating that people of all Christian denominations and Judaism were considered equal to catholics, in wake of the protestant reformation. While there were problems with native converts being unofficial second class citizens for a while, this was still better than Britain and France and turned 'Spanish' from a term noting origin in the Iberian peninsula, to a term noting the loyalty to the crown. This created a distinct population influx and brought some of the first modern economic theorists to Spain.
Spain also remained neutral during the seven years war, while France and Britain were duking it out across the seas. While this limited their gains during the first decades of the eighteenth century, it let them gain more power and conquer the British Louisiana territory during the American Revolution.
Your job is to prevent Spain's meteoric rise, or to make it fall