Editing History of Spain (section)

==== Conquest of the Canary Islands, Columbian expeditions to the New World, and African expansion ====
{{See also|Conquest of the Canary Islands|Kingdom of the Canary Islands|Voyages of Christopher Columbus}}
[[File:Landing of Columbus (2) (cropped).jpg|thumb|Christopher Columbus leads expedition to the New World, 1492, sponsored by Spanish crown]]
[[File:Cisneros en la Toma de Oran Juan De Borgoña 1514 (cropped).jpeg|thumb|right|Taking of Oran by [[Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros]] in 1509.]]
The Castilian conquest of the [[Canary Islands]], inhabited by Guanche people, took place between 1402 (with the conquest of [[Lanzarote]]) and 1496 (with the conquest of [[Tenerife]]). Two periods can be distinguished in this process: the noble conquest, carried out by the nobility in exchange for a pact of vassalage, and the royal conquest, carried out directly by the Crown, during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs.<ref name="Mercer1980">{{cite book|first=John|last=Mercer|title=The Canary Islanders: Their Prehistory, Conquest, and Survival|url=https://archive.org/details/canaryislanderst00merc|url-access=registration|year=1980|publisher=Collings|isbn=978-0-86036-126-8|page=[https://archive.org/details/canaryislanderst00merc/page/214 214]}}</ref> By 1520, European military technology combined with the devastating epidemics such as bubonic plague and pneumonia brought by the Castilians and enslavement and deportation of natives led to the extinction of the Guanches.
Isabella and [[Ferdinand VII of Spain|Ferdinand]] authorized the 1492 expedition of [[Christopher Columbus]], who became the first known European to reach the [[New World]] since [[Leif Ericson]]. This and subsequent expeditions led to an influx of wealth into Spain, supplementing income from within Castile for the state that was a dominant power in Europe for the next two centuries.

Spain established colonies in North Africa that ranged from the Atlantic Moroccan coast to [[Tripoli, Libya|Tripoli]] in Libya. [[Melilla]] was occupied in 1497, [[Oran]] in 1509, [[Larache]] in 1610, and [[Ceuta]] was annexed from the Portuguese in 1668. Today, both Ceuta and Melilla still remain under Spanish control, together with smaller islets known as the ''[[presidio]]s menores'' ([[Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera]], [[Alhucemas Islands|las Islas de Alhucemas]], [[Chafarinas Islands|las Islas de Chafarinas]]).