Spain to America (western Catholic expansion)

Spanish became a major world language through colonization, and Spanish missionaries helped preserve and spread indigenous languages by creating dictionaries and translating religious texts.
Literature and arts: The Spanish Golden Age produced world-renowned authors like Miguel de Cervantes and painters like Diego Velázquez.
The Spanish were a major force in spreading Roman Catholicism globally, establishing churches, missions, and dioceses.
They founded schools and universities, both for the Spanish elite and for indigenous populations, which helped spread literacy and new ideas. There is still in Toledo an old rite (prior to the Roman rite) used https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozarabic_Rite Between 711 and 718 the Iberian Peninsula had been conquered by Muslims in the Umayyad conquest of Hispania; between 722 and 1492 the Christian kingdoms that later would become Spain and Portugal reconquered it from the Moorish states of Al-Ándalus. The Spanish Inquisition and Portuguese Inquisition were not installed until 1478 and 1536 when the Reconquista was already (mostly) completed.