Spain in the sixteenth century: in 1504 Death of Queen Elizabeth opens a series of regencies that show that the Spanish unit is still precarious.
In 1517 arrived in Spain the new King Charles I. The gentry and nobility support the real power and the defeat of Villalar.
State with different nationalities and a king who is emperor and head of a vast empire: Spain, Germany, Flanders, America, other European possessions, places of North Africa ... the expenses of the ongoing wars bankrupted the state treasury and Charles I had to go to expensive loans from European bankers.
These economic difficulties were compounded in the second half of the century during the reign of Philip II. Broken benches are produced in March. Wars happen. Also in the interior of Spain is remarkable instability: War Morice granaína. The failure of the called Invincible Armada in 1588, while heading towards the English coast, clearly mark the beginning of the decline of the Spanish empire.
Socially, the nobility still during the sixteenth century an important pre-eminent. There is a hierarchy among the aristocrats of high nobility, the knights, in last place, the gentry. Dear privileges, especially that of the tax exemption. Hence the interest in getting at least the rank of gentleman. The tax burden thus falls, copper farmers and traders, during the XVI century noble values are reinforced.
The Spanish social scene would be incomplete without reference to the problem of religious minorities of Jews and Moors.

Following the order of expulsion of Jews, part of the community decided to leave the country and another convert to Christianity and remain in Spain. The conversos or New Christians were always seen by Christians as old as suspicious and were often persecuted by the Inquisition.
Many commercial activities or judioconversos interectuales played an influential social position.
Culturally, the Spanish humanism know your time of peak in the first third of the sixteenth century. come important Italian humanists. Among the Spanish humanists with names such as Nebrija or Brozas Francisco Sanchez of the Brocense.
Erasmo treaties had begun to be translated into Castilian and in 1511. outstanding intellectuals such as Luis Vives. The fast fell we were disgraced. Orthodoxy defended by the Inquisition, will be relentless. Inexorable decline of Spanish humanism.
In 1558 Spanish lso are prohibited from studying in certain European universities. The following year he published the first Index of Forbidden Books. Books and thinkers are so very viciously persecuted. Servetus, who, because of their theological polemics with Calvin, was burned at the stake in Geneva in 1553.
Readers were varied. Most of the population remained illiterate and had to be current reading aloud to a group, especially books of chivalry. Nuclei were literate in the most important cities among aristocrats, ecclesiastics and bourgeois.