Spanish Main

Spanish Main
Region of Spanish Empire
Spanish possessions (yellow)[when?] in the Caribbean region, with the coastline of the Spanish Main indicated (thick maroon line).

During the Spanish colonization of the Americas, the Spanish Main was the collective term for the parts of the Spanish Empire that were on the mainland of the Americas and had coastlines on the Caribbean Sea or Gulf of Mexico. The term was used to distinguish those regions from the numerous islands Spain controlled in the Caribbean, which were known as the Spanish West Indies.^[1]