Mexico–Spain relations are the bilateral relations between Mexico and Spain. Both nations are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Organization of Ibero-American States and the United Nations. History Spanish conquest The Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés led an expedition to what is now Mexico in 1518, establishing the city of Veracruz on his arrival. Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire, fell to Spain in 1521. It was renamed Mexico City, the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The Viceroyalty had a stratified social hierarchy based on race with the peninsulares (people born in Spain) on top, who had the most civil rights, until the Laws of the Indies were established throughout the Spanish Empire in the Americas. Independence The late 18th and early 19th century saw much revolutionary feeling in the countries of Western Europe and their colonies. The feeling built up in Mexico after the occupation of Spain by the French Revolutionary Emperor Napoleon in 1808, and the 1810 Grito de Dolores speech by Mexican Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla against Spanish rule is widely recognized as the beginning of the Mexican War of Independence. In 1811, Hidalgo was executed by the Spanish militia, but his movement fought on until the establishment of the independent constitutional Mexican Empire in 1821, after the Treaty of Córdoba. The Empire was ousted and the first Mexican Republic created in 1823. Post-independence Spain established diplomatic relations with Mexico on 26 December 1836 (15 years after Mexico had declared its independence). In the beginning, the diplomatic relationship between the two nations was strained due to Mexico having been a former colony of Spain and the latter's unsuccessful endeavors to reconquer its former colony in the ensuing years under General Isidro Barradas. General Juan Prim commanded the Spanish expeditionary army in Mexico in 1862, when France, Spain, and the United Kingdom sought forced payment from the liberal government of Benito Juárez for loans. Prim was a sympathizer with the Mexican liberal cause, thus he refused to consent to the ambitious schemes of French emperor Napoleon III, and withdrew Spanish forces following a meeting with Manuel Doblado. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), Mexico had provided arms and refuge to political refugees. Throughout the war, Mexican volunteers joined the Republican side to fight Francisco Franco. In 1939 when Francisco Franco took power in Spain, Mexico severed diplomatic relations between the two