[2banana]

The irony of this is that Spain was ruled by a warrior aristocracy tempered by centuries of constant warfare against Islamic hordes and Christian heretics. These nobles looked down on merchants and manufacturers and disparaged their mundane professions only to find that without a strong domestic business class they could not afford the fleets and armies that guarded the empire they had built.

By the time of the Spanish-American war - the Spanish Army and Navy were a joke.

[J Aguilar]

In the last 200 years, the Spanish fleet has been rebuilt three times. Each one of them, the results exceeded the average for a nation of its size, thanks to the efforts of officers like Fernando Villaamil or Isaac Peral.

Villaamil participated in the invention of the Destroyer and died in Santiago on one of them. Isaac Peral developed the first military submarine, an invention so revolutionary that the British had to bribe Spanish politicians in order to suspend further advances.