The Spanish and the new world Thesis statement: although the Spanish came to discover the New World much later than the Portuguese, their great wealth helped them form a very big foreign territory. A significant person in the record of Spanish explorations was Christopher Columbus. After being abandoned by the Portuguese, he asked Queen Isabella of Spain to fund his team, which reached the Americas in 1492. He surveyed the coastline of Cuba and the northern shores of the nearby islands of Hispaniola. Columbus thought he had arrived in Asia so he sought in vain to find a way through the outer islands to the Asian mainland. In the course of his explorations, he came across major islands of the Caribbean, which he named the Indies, as well as Honduras in Central America.