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The formation and the hegemony of the Spanish monarchy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries cannot be understood without studying the diverse social and cultural phenomena that lie at its foundations. The expansion of Spanish and Portuguese power unleashed certain political and social processes in which the local populations of Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas were the main actors. Whether these populations were incorporated by consent or through force, or whether they were neighbors to Iberian power, their local tensions and their electoral choices became decisive in the eventual configuration of Spanish power and its evolution. The analysis of local politics thus becomes key to an understanding of events on a global scale. The history of the Spanish monarchy incorporates the violent process of its formation, its polycentrism, its relationship with the rest of the world, and, especially, the importance of ordinary actors: those that accepted it or those that fought against it.