[Cronos]

I don't think the Portuguese had exclusive rights in the 1400s. That was only crated in the 1500s when the Spanisha nd Portuguese asked the Pope to arbitrate. He drew a line on the globe and said that the Portuguese could control the lands to the east of the line -- that's why Brazil was Portuguese and the Phillipines spanish.

[Servant of the 9]

I don't think the Portuguese had exclusive rights in the 1400s. That was only crated in the 1500s when the Spanisha nd Portuguese asked the Pope to arbitrate.

Yep, you're right.
Until the fall of Constantinople in 1452, it was the Venetians who had exclusive control of trade through the Middle East.
At any rate, the Spanish were odd man out, because they were not a unified nation until the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile in 1469 and the reconquest of Granada in 1492.
The Portugese had been the great explorers of the last half of the 15th century and had grabbed everything the Venetians had lost control of.

So9