The Mint of Seville: How Silver Shaped Spain's Empire

In Episode 71 of The Story of Spain: Empire, Gold, and Global Power, Lucas and Luna step into the Casa de la Moneda de Sevilla—the royal mint that turned New World silver into the currency of empire. They trace the journey of a Potosí silver bar from the Andes to the Guadalquivir, where it was struck into reales de a ocho, the Spanish dollar that would become the world's first global currency. Along the way, they meet the ingenious ingenio water-powered mill, the bribed mint officials who shaved coins, and the merchant houses of Genoa and Augsburg that lived on Spanish silver. They examine the 17th-century crisis of coinage debasement, the vellón copper inflation that corroded the economy, and the surprising afterlife of the Spanish dollar—still legal tender in the United States until 1857. This episode brings to life the mechanics of money: how a single coin could bind the silver mountain of Potosí to a merchant in Manila, a tax farmer in Castile, and a pirate in the Caribbean. A story of metal, trust, and the fragile architecture of global finance. #CasaDeLaMonedaDeSevilla #Potosí #SpanishDollar #RealesDeAOcho #SilverAge #Inflation #Vellón #GenoeseBankers #WorldEconomy #16thCentury #17thCentury #Seville #Guadalquivir #Mint #Coinage #History #FexingoHistory #Spain Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo