This chapter gives an overview of the contacts Spanish experienced since the beginning of colonization. It first sketches the earliest contacts of Latin on the Iberian Peninsula, before outlining the settings in which new varieties of Spanish emerged as it spread into the world. It presents varieties along a continuum of increasing contact intensity from high-contact and mixed varieties, such as Caribbean Spanish and Paraguayan Jopará, to the few Spanish-lexified creole languages. It also discusses the challenges encountered in the description and classification of Afro-Hispanic varieties as intermediate varieties to show which methodological challenges still need to be addressed and how they contribute to larger theoretical issues, particularly those concerning the synchronic classification of creole languages and the creole prototype. The conclusion gives an outlook towards possible directions the discipline of Spanish contact linguistics could take in the future.