Spanish Colombians are Colombians of full or partial Spanish descent. Due to Colombia's history as a Spanish colony, many Colombians are of full or partial Spanish descent. Colombian culture is heavily influenced by Spain's. Because of this, combined with the Colombian government using " White Colombian" instead of "Spanish Colombian", the term is rarely used.

History

Spanish explorers arrived in Colombia in 1499 to colonize the land. They built settlements in territories of the Musica Confederation, ignoring the views of the people who lived there. These establishments continued for three centuries with occupation, genocide, and war. While introducing a large African slave population, they displaced the

Indigenous peoples There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territ ...

. In 1499, the first Spanish explorer,

Alonso de Ojeda Alonso de Ojeda (; c. 1466 – c. 1515) was a Spanish explorer, governor and conquistador. He is famous for having named Venezuela, which he explored during his first two expeditions, for having been the first European to visit Guyana, Curaçao ...

, arrived on the coast of northern Colombia ( Cabo de la Vela). n 1501 Rodrigo de Bastidas crossed the coast between Cartagena and La Guajira, discovering the Magdalena River. In 1510 Alonso de Ojeda founded San Sebastián de Urabá, the first Spanish settlement there, but that same year its provisional ruler, Francisco Pizarro, left. The settlement was moved to a site in the Gulf of Urabá and launched under the direction of Martín Fernández de Enciso as

Santa María la Antigua del Darién Santa María la Antigua del Darién—turned into Dariena in the Latin of De Orbo Novo—was a Spanish colonial town founded in 1510 by Vasco Núñez de Balboa, located in present-day Colombia approximately south of Acandí, within the muni ...

. This city, the capital of the first Spanish government in the Castilla del Oro, was in abandoned in 1517. With Santa Marta (1525) and Cartagena (1533), the Spanish established control of the Colombian coast. ''

Conquistador Conquistadors (, ) or conquistadores (; ; ) were Spanish Empire, Spanish and Portuguese Empire, Portuguese colonizers who explored, traded with and colonized parts of the Americas, Africa, Oceania and Asia during the Age of Discovery. Sailing ...

'' Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada entered the central region of Cundinamarca and Boyacá, conquering the powerful

Chibcha The Muisca (also called the Chibcha) are indigenous peoples in Colombia and were a Pre-Columbian cultures of Colombia, Pre-Columbian culture of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense that formed the Muisca Confederation before the Spanish colonizati ...

culture, founding the city of Santa Fe de Bogota, Tunja ordered Gonzalo Suarez Rendon to name it the New Kingdom of Granada region. To establish a civil government in New Granada, he created a Real Audiencia in Santa Fe de Bogota in 1548-1549. The Royal Court combined executive and judicial authority until a presidency/governorship in 1564 assumed executive powers. Until 1550 the territory of Colombia was formed by the governors of Santa Marta and Cartagena, which were subject to the Audiencia of Santo Domingo, and Popayan who was subject to the

viceroyalty of Peru The Viceroyalty of Peru (), officially known as the Kingdom of Peru (), was a Monarchy of Spain, Spanish imperial provincial administrative district, created in 1542, that originally contained modern-day Peru and most of the Spanish Empire in ...

. The jurisdiction of the Real Audiencia de Santa Fe de Bogotá included these governorates since 1550 and extended in time over the surrounding provinces that were forming around the country corresponding to the New Granada. In 1717, Santa Fe de Bogotá became capital of the Viceroyalty of New Granada, although that was suspended in 1724 due to financial problems. It was reinstated in 1740 and continued until the loss of Spanish power over the territories in the 1810s, which led

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

become one of

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

's first independent nation and the third-oldest independent republic after

Haiti Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti, is a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of the Bahamas. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, which it shares with the Dominican ...

and the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. The ''paisas'' are an isolated population, and therefore evolved differently. They are mostly of Spanish descent, because Spanish men who settled in the region during the 16th and 17th centuries were accompanied by their wives. The mountains isolated the population until the late 19th century, when Antioquia entered the industrial revolution.Bedoya G, Montoya P, Garcia J, Soto I, Bourgeois S, Carvajal L, Labuda D, Alvarez V, Ospina J, Hedrick PW, Ruiz-Linares A. Admixture dynamics in Hispanics: A shift in the nuclear genetic ancestry of a South American population isolate. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2006 Apr 2, "Ancestro europeo de los antioqueños".

References

{{Colombian people * *

History

See also

References