Empire Rising: Spain

Although the new warship submitted by the Royal Guanizuo Shipyard looks powerful, the decision to build four main battleships at once has sparked intense disputes within the Cabinet Government.

Investing more than a hundred million Pesseta for the Navy means that the financial budget for other government departments will be reduced by a total of more than a hundred million Pesseta.

This is exactly the reason for the disputes among the departments; no one wants their financial budget to be reduced too much, thus affecting their development plans.

Ultimately, Carlo directly decided to approve the Ministry of Defense’s plan to build four ironclads.

Building four ironclads requires 72.8 million Pesseta, with the Cabinet Government providing 55 million Pesseta, and the Ministry of Defense gathering the remaining 17.8 million Pesseta themselves.

Because Spain plans to launch a war against the Asante Federation next, this has led to nearly a 20% increase in the Ministry of Defense’s military budget compared to usual.

Squeezing out 17.8 million Pesseta is still no big problem, especially since this sum doesn’t need to be paid all at once.

Spain’s shipyards have undergone many years of development, long since breaking free from the embarrassing situation when Carlo first became King of Spain, when no shipyard had the capacity to build ironclads.

Apart from Spain’s largest Royal Guanizuo Shipyard, other shipyards with the capability to build ironclads include the Valencia United Shipyard, the El Ferrol Royal Navy Shipyard, and the Cartagena Shipyard.

However, these three shipyards are all managed and operated by the government. Except for the Valencia United Shipyard, where the Royal Family holds nearly half of the shares, the Royal Family doesn’t hold many shares in the other two shipyards.

This is true even for the El Ferrol Royal Navy Shipyard. Although the shipyard’s name includes the Royal Navy, it doesn’t have much to do with the Royal Family or the Navy.

The largest shareholder of the El Ferrol Royal Navy Shipyard is the Spanish Government, the second largest is the El Ferrol city government, and the Spanish Royal Navy holds less than ten percent of the shares.

It is named the Royal Navy Shipyard because El Ferrol’s rise was entirely due to Spain establishing a naval base here, and the earliest shipyard belonged to the Navy. However, with the Navy’s decline, most of the shipyard’s shares have long been sold.

All of Spain’s shipyards with the capability to build ironclads are official entities; private shipyards currently do not yet have the capacity to build ironclads.

Ironclads are the most advanced warships of this era, and it’s not so easy for private shipyards to build them.

The largest private shipyard in Spain can currently only build warships like light cruisers, which generally do not exceed 3,000 tons and belong to the medium and small-sized warships.

Besides handling small-scale orders from the military, private shipyards mainly make money from orders for civilian vessels.

Although civilian ships generally have small tonnage, building small civilian ships doesn’t take much time. As long as there are enough orders, these private shipyards can still make money.

As Spain’s colonies grow in number and size, the maritime transport industry is becoming increasingly prosperous.

This has ushered in a golden period of development for Spain’s shipyards, and with government support, Spain’s shipbuilding industry has already achieved some success, ranking among the top in Europe.

Along with the shipbuilding plans, the naming level of this new warship design has also been determined.

The previous generation of ironclads was named the Revival-class, and this generation of ironclads has been named by the Spanish Government as the Bullfighter-class Ironclad.

The codenames of the four Bullfighter-class Ironclads are the Bullfighter, Warrior, Courage, and Invincible Ironclads, respectively.

The naming of the ironclads also reveals how hard the Spanish Government is working to shape the national spirit.

Carlo’s expectations for the Spanish land and sea forces are exactly like the naming of these ironclads. The comprehensive combat power of the Spanish land and sea forces may be weaker than those of the superpowers, but they must possess fearless courage.

Sometimes courage is more important than equipment. If the equipment is the same, the side with more indomitable courage can exhibit greater combat power.

As the saying goes, when warriors meet on a narrow path, the brave will win. Carlo definitely does not want his painstakingly trained troops to turn out to be cowardly surrenderers.

Spain’s population is inferior to that of the European Powers, so they can only improve the combat power of the land and sea forces this way to close the gap with other powerful nations.

As for the building plan for these four ironclads, the Spanish Government still does not intend to keep it confidential.

Even with the addition of these four ironclads, the strength of the Spanish Fleet is still not enough to shake the British. Not to mention shaking the British, there is still a considerable gap to the British Royal Fleet.

The United Kingdom controls India, which brings substantial financial income to the British Government every year. This has led to an exaggeratedly astronomical figure being spent on naval construction, having built three ironclads in just the last two years.

Building three ironclads in two years might not seem like much of an investment, but the problem is that the British construction pace almost never stops.

To date, Spain has at most five ironclads. The British only need four years to build the entire number of ironclads that the Spanish Navy currently possesses.