Spanish Navy

(Redirected from Spanish navy)

Categories: Navies | Spanish Navy

The Spanish Navy (in Spanish, Armada Española) is the navy of Spain.

Contents

[edit]

History

The Armada's roots go back the discovering of America, when two small ships (Caravels) and one Nao commanded by Admiral Christopher Columbus arrived in North America. After that, Hernán Cortés, Pizarro and other conquerers were conducted by the Spanish Armada to America.

One of the most famous Armada Admirals in history was Álvaro de Bazán, "Almirante de la mar océana" (Admiral of the Ocean Seas) whom in 1571 helped to conduct the Battle of Lepanto against the Ottoman Empire. The Infanteria de Marina, the world's first marine corps (established in 1537), played a prominent role in this battle.

The Spanish Armada's defeat in 1588 did not mark a decline in the Spanish navy's dominance but actually led to a thorough reform of it that led to a rapid recovery of its dominance. Following the defeat of a massive English counter armada in 1589 the Spanish navy won a number of victories and successfully dealt with bucaneering against Spanish treasure fleet and attacks upon its Caribbean territories. The fifty year period that followed the 1588 defeat was in fact the zenith of the Spanish navy's mastery of the seas.

It was the Dutch rebels who with increasingly bold attacks from the 1620s, upon Spanish and especially Portuguese shipping (Portugal was then under Spanish Habsburg rule), finally defeated a large Spanish troop carrying fleet in the Battle of the Downs in 1639. More defeats inflicted by the Dutch navy followed in the 1640s leaving Spain unable to reliably supply its troops in the Spanish Netherlands by sea and from then on the war, against the Dutch and French, soon turned into a route and began the steep decline of the Spanish Empire in Europe as a force from the middle decades of the seventeenth century. Smelling the decay of Spain's power, the English dictator, Oliver Cromwell, initiated the Anglo-Spanish War (1654). The modern English navy, greatly refined in technique by recent hard fought battles with the Dutch, inflicted several devastating defeats on the increasingly antiquated armada, and helped England seize the major island of Jamaica. This was to be the beginning of further losses of islands in the Caribbean that were used as bases for attacks on Spanish American towns and the treasure fleet by pirates and privateers. The government of the later Spanish Habsburgs, having bankrupted and exhausted Spain in the massive efforts of the Thirty Years and Eighty Years wars, showed no sign of its ancestors' vigourous reforming abilities, and so the once proud navy was eclipsed by its Dutch, English and French counterparts and even lost some major warships to their privateers. Indeed, in the latter part of the seventeenth century the services of the Dutch navy were engaged to help protect the treasure fleets during times of war.

During the eighteenth century the new Bourbon monarchy brought with it French expertise which modernised the armada, though it was still a very distant third as the French and British navies vied for dominance. Nevertheless the armada still managed to play a vital role in important military successes such as in the War of Jenkins' Ear and the American War of Independence, and continued carrying out its regular duties such as patrolling coastlines, suppressing piracy and protecting convoys, with the help of a large fleet of frigates.

Throughout its history the Spanish Navy has achieved numerous goals, from the transportation of gold and silver from the colonies in America, to the maintenance of the Spanish Empire in Europe, America, Asia and Africa. In its heyday it contributed vastly to the geographical knowledge of the world, the opening of ocean routes across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and the suppression of piracy and smuggling. It also contributed greatly to the early development of ocean going vessels, most famously the galleon.

The nineteenth century was the nadir of the Spanish Armada's history. The armada suffered two disastrous defeats that left it virtually destroyed. On June 29 1805, it was defeated in the Battle of Trafalgar, when under incompetent French command, by the brilliant British Admiral Nelson. Then on July 3rd of 1898, Admiral Cervera's fault ridden squadron was annihilated in a heroic but clearly hopeless charge at a modern American squadron off Cuba, during the Spanish-American war. These results were ultimately more due to the thoroughly corrupt and consequently arrogant and inept state the Spanish government had fallen into at this time (and in the latter case given away by bragging officials), than to any failings of the sailors and commanders themselves, who by and large acquitted themselves with honour in battle and defeat as was acknowledged by the American victors.

[edit]

Modern navy

In modern times, the Armada Española is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and has taken part in many coalition peacekeeping operations, from SFOR to Haiti.

Today's Armada is a modern navy with ships such as aircraft carriers, modern frigates (F-100 class) with the Aegis combat system, F-80 frigates, F-70 frigates, amphibious ships and plenty of other smaller ships, including an oceanographic research ship. The Spanish Marine Corps, known in Spanish as the Infantería de Marina, is also part of the Armada.

Armada officers recive their education at the Spanish Naval Academy (ENM). They are recruited in two different ways:

  • Militar de Complemento: Similar to the U.S. ROTC program, students are college graduates who enroll the Navy. They spend a year at the Naval Academy and then are commissioned as Ensigns. This path is becoming more and more prestigious.
  • Militar de Carrera: Students spend five years at the ENM, receiving a university degree-equivalent upon graduation.
[edit]

Ship classes

[edit]

External links