The Kingdom of Spain
At its height the Spanish Empire controlled almost 8 million square miles of land and almost 70 million people; around 12% of the population of the world. The 1808 conquest of Spain by Napoleon led to the collapse of much of it as the central power of the monarchy withered. By 1833 all of South America was independent with few parts of the world like Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Spanish Sahara remaining under Spanish control.
Spain itself had been wracked by the Carlist civil wars between 1833 and 1876 and was even a Republic for a period. From 1874 under the rule of Alfonso XII there was a stable period of prosperity during which the economy modernised and prosperity returned. With the death of Alfonso XII from Tuberculosis in 1885 his wife, Maria Christina, continued as regent for her baby son, Alfonso XIII.
In 1870 Thomas Edison and Jack Armstrong became the first Earthmen to land on the planet Mars. They were soon followed by a large and eclectic group of explorers and adventurersthat have continued to this very day. For the Spanish Empire, Matias Pérez the first to independently land on the Red Planet on Easter Sunday 1878. He was the son of the famed Cuban balloonist and later sadly shared a similar fate to his father when he too disappeared on a mission, though his was to the planet Mercury. Pérez landed near the Martian city of Valx and established cordial relations with the local Martian rulers. In 1880 a small trading station was established on Mars and this would continue to grow till it became the Spanish colony of Villa Real.
