Comment by achenet

> Spain had extreme wealth from colonies, but wasted it on nothing but debauchery.

I disagree with this, I don't consider "expensive wars with other European powers" to be debauchery.

Losing the entire Spanish Armada [1] was a very expensive mistake, but the reason the Armada was lost was because the Spanish crown wanted to invade England over religious differences (England being Protestant, Spain being Catholic), not because they decided to throw a huge boat party and got so drunk they accidentally sank everything.

Much like the wars of the French crown which would end up so hurting the country financially that they caused a revolution, the wars of the Spanish crown also had a rather unpleasant effect on national finances.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Armada