Sulkdodds
The Freeman
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2003
- Messages
- 18,846
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It can sometimes be spelt the same way (and in the UK is said without "pie" on the end), hence the confusion. Can't speak for others but I was taking the piss, like no shit I went on wikipedia soon after wondering what the hell hispanic people liked so much about a dessert anyway.
As far as I know, which isn't very far: they couldn't sustain their empire and after getting into a bunch of big wars in the 17th century had a long two hundred year economic decline during which they were briefly conquered by other nations (e.g. Napoleonic wars) and so on and so forth. The extremely regressive local arm of the Catholic church didn't help much either. By the 1920s the state of the country was so bad that attempts to modernise and progress it (e.g. land reform, democratic government) provoked a civil war that left the fascist Franco in power until the late 70s.
