An empire besieged

Arriving first can be a mixed blessing. As the most advanced and established European empire in the Americas throughout the sixteenth century, Spain suffered repeated attacks from its imperial rivals. England, for example, gleefully disseminated the Black Legend of unprecedented Spanish cruelty in the New World, while simultaneously attempting to acquire through privateering the possessions that Spain had originally conquered. Spanish territories in the New World experienced constant attacks by semi-offcial pirates such as Drake. These required defensive measures that taxed even the copious resources the Crown extracted from the Indies. After the defeat of the Armada, the Iberian Peninsula itself became more vulnerable, as England attacked with increasing boldness while Spain's scant naval resources were spread ever more thinly over the multiple conflicts in which the state engaged at the same time. It was not feasible for a single navy, no matter how powerful, effectively to protect the Spanish coasts, escort the treasure-laden galleons from the Indies, guard New World settlements and Spanish coasts from piratical attacks, and contain the rebellion in the Netherlands, as Philip's forces attempted to do during these years.

Spain was beleaguered not only by rival European powers but by the forces of Islam in the Western Mediterranean. After the defeat of the Ottoman navy at Lepanto in 1571, corsairs from Tunis and Algiers, client states to the Turks, posed the primary threat to Spanish coastal settlements.