There is some actual history involved. It can get very spaghettified, what with Dutch reluctance to stir up the Sultanate, Germans prowling around, the local European and Moro slave traders and Ottoman treachery added to spice things up.
The Spanish ran a North Atlantic guerre de course during the Spanish American War that was little noticed. The First Cruiser Squadron (Cervera's force as denoted by the Americans.) was supposed to base out of Havana and raid American operations in the Caribbean Sea. On paper, the Armada was perfectly capable of this action, if Cervera could have reached Havana. The trouble is that the USN was staffed and crewed by some excellent personnel, even if their ships were RTL pieces of crap. The Spaniards, IF they had kept their training and maintenance up, would have been a near match for Schley. They (IMTs) had technologically superior guns, torpedoes and power plants to the Indianas and their armor was "adequate" to the threat the USN posed. Nitro-cellulose powder and Brotherhood engined Whitehead torpedoes, and the
Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company of
Jarrow, England planform was well engined with Yarrow VTE steam engines. On paper, an Infant Maria Teresia was a full generation ahead of the marine boilered, brown-powder gunned, torpedo-less American's Indianas and Iowa.
The main difference is the Americans put in the training and the work and fixed their issues. The Spaniards did not. American guns did not jam or explode shells in the breech, the American ships had their bottoms cleaned and the Americans stocked war-shot ammunition and practiced with it. The Spaniards went the Qing China route and it killed them.