Santander

Santander lies on a sheltered bay of the Cantabrian coast. After the Castilian fleet's victory over the English at La Rochelle in 1372, Henry II entered the port, which became the Atlantic naval base of the crown, with royal shipyards like those of Seville and Barcelona. In 1466 Henry IV gave the town to the Marquis of Santillana. Plague in 1596–97 left only 800 of its 2,500 people.

In 1748 the crown ordered a road built through Reinosa to carry Castile's wool and flour to the port. In 1754 Santander became a diocese and the abbey of the Holy Bodies a cathedral, and in 1755 Ferdinand VI granted it the title of city. Free trade with Spanish America from 1765 opened its commerce to the Atlantic, and by the early nineteenth century Santander led the exchanges between the north of the peninsula and the major American ports.