The Viceroyalty of New Spain (Spanish: Virreinato de Nueva España Spanish pronunciation: [βirejˈnato ðe ˈnweβa esˈpaɲa] (About this soundlisten)) was an integral territorial entity of the Spanish Empire, established by Habsburg Spain during the Spanish colonization of the Americas. It covered a huge area that included much of North America, northern parts of South America and several Pacific Ocean archipelagos, namely Philippines and Guam. It originated in 1521 after the fall of Tenochtitlan, the main event of the Spanish conquest, and officially created on 18 August 1521 as a kingdom (Spanish: reino), the first of four viceroyalties Spain created in the Americas. Its first viceroy was Antonio de Mendoza y Pacheco, and the capital of the kingdom was Mexico City, established on the ancient Tenochtitlan.
It included what is now Mexico plus the current U.S. states of California, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Oregon, Washington, Florida and parts of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana; the southwestern part of British Columbia of present-day Canada; the Captaincy General of Guatemala (which included the current countries of Guatemala, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Mexican state of Chiapas); the Captaincy General of Cuba (current Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Trinidad and Tobago); and the Captaincy General of the Philippines (including the Philippines, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Caroline Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the short lived Spanish Formosa in modern-day northern Taiwan, as well as, for a century, the island of Tidore and the briefly occupied Sultanate of Ternate, both in modern-day Indonesia).
Other kingdoms of the Spanish Empire bordered New Spain and were given the right of appeal to the most senior representative of the king. These kingdoms were independent of New Spain (separate from New Spain itself): Nueva Galicia (1530), Captaincy General of Guatemala (1540), Nueva Vizcaya (1562), New Kingdom of León (1569), Santa Fe de Nuevo México (1598), Nueva Extremadura (1674), and Nuevo Santander (1746).
