"No, it was mostly because of the gold and silver pillaged out of South America."
Gee are we definite today?! So why did Spain have all those colonies in the Americas and England did not? Spain had to get there. It took strength to get to Peru. Jamestown came over one hundred years after 1492 for a reason.
Queen Isabella had to sell her jewels to get funding for the Columbus expedition. Spain wasn’t really swimming in money at the time. It became powerful in the 16th century, not the 15th. Pizarro went to Peru to look for gold, not to establish colonies. One needs cash for colonies. From the wikipedia entry on Spain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain
Quote: “The treasure fleet across the Atlantic and the Manila galleons across the Pacific made it the wealthiest and most powerful nation in Europe”
Unfortuntaly, all that gold had some bad effects on the economy afterward.