Lucky Conquests

By Bernardo Filipe / December 31, 2025

“The Spaniards are the lottery winners of history who blew it all on cocaine and porcelain figurines and are now living in a trailer. Spain proves that you can be given the keys to the world and still manage to lock yourself out of the house.”—Resentful words towards a civilization and culture that achieved incredible feats in practically all metrics. “Lottery winners” is such a bad analogy, dreamt up only by envy. They sacrificed immensely to win the “lottery”. It was not luck at all that got them to colonize half the planet: it was all the result of protracted effort and sacrifice exerted throughout several centuries, starting from the Reconquista all the way to the American Conquista, and that’s formidable. The Portuguese and the Spanish were warriors, conquerors, and explorers. Not mere bean-counting shopkeepers (though they were also that). It took huge amounts of intelligence and courage to do what they did. Bottom line is that it was not due to “luck” that the Portuguese won the Battle of Diu: it was because of their century-long investment in naval technology that resulted in them building far superior, far deadlier warships.

But before I can even finish my explanation of why there was no luck involved in the American conquests, another person shows up telling me the conquistadors had no right to take the gold from their colonies: “I’m always a bit shocked by the education in Spain and Portugal about the old colonies. They really believe they were fully in their right to extract the gold, silver and other materials from the people that were there before they arrived in their ships.”—It’s called EXPLORATION, CONQUEST, AND COLONIZATION. Who do you think needed the gold the most? The savages living in the jungle, or the European civilizations surrounded by other powerful European enemies who constantly attacked them? Extracting the wealth from their colonies in American soil or profiting in trade from securing the maritime route to the East Indies was not only the reward for their constant risk-taking, but also necessary to stay on top of their competing European enemies, a few of which eventually ended up beating both the Portuguese and the Spanish (which was also not due to “luck”).