Spanish Americans
Spanish Americans are Americans whose ancestry originates wholly or partly from Spain. They are the longest-established European American group in the modern United States, with a very small group descending from those explorations leaving from Spain and the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and starting in the early 1500s, of 42 of the future U.S. states from California to Florida; and beginning a continuous presence in Florida since 1565 and New Mexico since 1598.
In the 2020 United States census, 978,978 self-identified as "Spaniard" representing of the white alone or in combination population who responded to the question. Other results include 866,356 identifying as "Spanish" and 50,966 who identified with "Spanish American".
Many Hispanic and Latino Americans living in the United States have some Spanish ancestral roots due to up to four centuries of Spanish colonial settlement and significant immigration of Spaniards after independence. In terms of ancestry, these groups, and especially white Hispanic and Latino Americans 12,579,626 could be called "Spanish Americans", with the caveat that they can also include European origins other than Spanish, and often Amerindian or African ancestry. A number of communities descended from European Spanish immigrants are elided by the “Hispanic and Latino” ethnic category; these include the descendants of Basques in the western states, Isleños in the gulf coast states, and Asturians in states like West Virginia, among others.
The term "Spanish American" is used mostly to refer to Americans whose self-identified ancestry originates directly from Spain in the 19th and 20th centuries.
History
Immigration waves
Throughout the colonial times, there were a number of European settlements of Spanish populations in the present-day United States of America with governments answerable to Madrid. The first settlement on modern-day U.S. soil was San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1521, followed by St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565, followed by others in New Mexico, California, Arizona, and Texas. In 1598, San Juan de los Caballeros was established, near present-day Santa Fe, New Mexico, by Juan de Oñate and about 1,000 other Spaniards from the Viceroyalty of New Spain.Spanish immigrants also established settlements in San Diego, California, San Antonio, Texas and Tucson, Arizona. By the mid-1600s the Spanish in America numbered more than 400,000.
After the establishment of the American colonies, an additional 250,000 immigrants arrived either directly from Spain, the Canary Islands or, after a relatively short sojourn, from present-day central Mexico. These Spanish settlers expanded European influence in the New World. The Canary Islanders settled in bayou areas surrounding New Orleans in Louisiana from 1778 to 1783 and in San Antonio de Bejar, San Antonio, Texas, in 1731.
The earliest known Spanish settlements in the then northern Mexico were the result of the same forces that later led the English to come to North America. Exploration had been fueled in part by imperial hopes for the discovery of wealthy civilizations. In addition, like those aboard the Mayflower, most Spaniards came to the New World seeking land to farm, or occasionally, as historians have recently established, freedom from religious persecution. A smaller percentage of new Spanish settlers were descendants of Spanish Jewish converts and Spanish Muslim converts.
Basques stood out in the exploration of the Americas, both as soldiers and members of the crews that sailed for the Spanish. Prominent in the civil service and colonial administration, they were accustomed to overseas travel and residence. Many of them were also wealthy and prosperous merchants, constituting much of the upper class in Spanish colonial society. Another reason for their emigration besides the restrictive inheritance laws in the Basque Country, was the devastation from the Napoleonic Wars in the first half of the nineteenth century, which was followed by defeats in the two Carlist civil wars.
19th and 20th centuries
Immigration to the United States from Spain was controversially minimal but steady during the first half of the nineteenth century, with an increase during the 1850s and 1860s resulting from the bloody warfare of the Carlist civil wars during the years of 1833–1876. Much larger numbers of Spanish immigrants entered the country in the first quarter of the twentieth century—27,000 in the first decade and 68,000 in the second—due to the same circumstances of rural poverty and urban congestion that led other Europeans to emigrate in that period, as well as unpopular wars-in this first wave of Spanish immigration. The Spanish presence in the United States declined sharply between 1930 and 1940 from a total of 110,000 to 85,000, because many immigrants returned to Spain after finishing their farmwork.Beginning with the coup d'état against the Second Spanish Republic in 1936 and the devastating civil war that ensued, General Francisco Franco established a dictatorship for 40 years. At the time of his takeover, a small but prominent group of liberal intellectuals fled to the United States. After the civil war the country endured a period of autarky, as Franco believed that post-World War II Spain could survive or continue its activities without any European assistance.
In the mid-1960s, 44,000 Spaniards immigrated to the United States, as part of a second wave of Spanish immigration. In the 1960s and 1970s the economic situation improved in Spain, and Spanish immigration to the United States declined to about 3,000 per year. In the 1980s, as Europe enjoyed an economic boom, Spanish immigrants to the United States dropped to only 15,000. The 1990 U.S. census recorded 76,000 foreign-born Spaniards in the country, representing only four-tenths of a percent of the total populace. As from the rest of Europe, 21st century immigrants from Spain are few, only 10,000 per year at most.
Much as with French Americans, who are of French descent but mostly by way of Canada, the majority of the 41 million massively strong Spanish-speaking population have come by way of Latin America, especially Mexico, but also Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and other areas that the Spanish themselves colonized. Many of the Hispanic and Latino Americans bring their Spanish-speaking culture into the country.
Main areas of settlement
Spanish Americans in the United States are found in large concentrations in five major states from 1940 through the early twenty-first century. In 1940, the highest concentration of Spaniards were in New York, followed by California, Florida, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The 1950 U.S. census indicated little change—New York with 14,705 residents from Spain and California with 10,890 topped the list. Spaniards followed into New Jersey with 3,382, followed by Florida and Pennsylvania. By 1990 and 2000, there was relatively little change except in the order of the states and the addition of Texas. In 1990, Florida ranked first with 78,656 Spanish immigrants followed by: California 74,784, New York, Texas, New Jersey. The 2000 U.S. census saw a significant decline in Spanish-origin immigrants. California now ranked highest, followed by, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Texas.Communities in the United States, in keeping with their strong regional identification in Spain, have established ethnic organizations for Basques, Galicians, Asturians, Andalusians, and other such communities.
These figures show that there was never the mass emigration from Iberia that there was from Latin America. It is evident in the figures that Spanish immigration peaked in the 1910s and 1920s. The majority settled in Florida and New York, although there was also a sizable Spanish influx to West Virginia at the turn of the 20th century, mostly from Asturias. These Asturian immigrants worked in the U.S. zinc industry after having worked in the smelters of Real Compañía Asturiana de Minas in Arnao, on the north coast near Avilés.
File:Portrait-of-Montegut-family- New Orleans 1790s.jpg|right|thumb|upright=1|Spanish Creole family portrait in New Orleans, Spanish Louisiana, 1790, painted by José Francisco de Salazar.
It is likely that more Spaniards settled in Latin America than in the United States, due to common language, shared religion, and cultural ties.
Some of the first ancestors of Spanish Americans were Spanish Jews who spoke Ladino, a language derived from Castilian Spanish and Hebrew.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Spanish immigration mostly consisted of refugees fleeing from the Spanish Civil War and from the Franco military regime in Spain, which lasted until his death in 1975. The majority of these refugees were businessmen and intellectuals, as well as union activists, and held strong liberal anti-authoritarian feelings.
California
A Californio is a Spanish term for a descendant of a person of Spanish and Mexican ancestry who was born in Alta California. "Alta California" refers to the time of the first Spanish presence established by the Portolá expedition in 1769 until the region's cession to the United States of America in 1848.Since 1945, others sometimes referred to as Californios include:
Early Alta California immigrants who settled down and made new lives in the province, regardless of where they were born. This group is distinct from indigenous peoples of California. Descendants of Californios, especially those who married other Californios.
The military, religious and civil components of pre-1848 Californio society were embodied in the thinly-populated presidios, missions, pueblos and ranchos. Until they were secularized in the 1830s, the twenty-one Spanish missions of California, with their thousands of more-or-less captive native converts, controlled the most and best land, had large numbers of workers, grew the most crops and had the most sheep, cattle and horses. After secularization, the Mexican authorities divided most of the mission lands into new ranchos and granted them to Mexican citizens resident in California.
The Spanish colonial and later Mexican national governments encouraged settlers from the northern and western provinces of Mexico, whom Californios called "Sonorans." Small groups of people from other parts of Latin America also settled in California. However, only a few official colonization efforts were ever undertaken—notably the second expeditions of Gaspar de Portolá and of Juan Bautista de Anza. Children of those few early settlers and retired soldiers became the first Californios. One genealogist estimated that, in 2004, between 300,000 and 500,000 Californians were descendants of Californios.