The United States’ edition of the United Kingdom’s Mirror news source published a heart-wrenching story in its June 11, 2025 online broadside, detailing the desire of a political group in Puerto Rico, Adelante Reunificacionistas, to return Puerto Rico to Spain (https://www.themirror.com/travel/territory-wants-ditch-america-rejoin-1201770). Why Spain? Mainly because, as you probably know, they happen to speak Spanish in Spain. But they should be careful about what they wish for: some Americans might be forgiven if they were willing to accept Puerto Rico’s quaintly romantic request to secede.
The US provides Puerto Rico with an estimated $23B in annual aid and receives only $5B in all federal taxes from Puerto Rico. With that level of aid, one must conclude that Spain would have a difficult time swallowing the reintroduction of Puerto Rico to its shrunken imperial holdings left over from better days.
The biggest obstacle to some quixotic adventure to return to Spain is, of course, Puerto Rico’s economic dependence on the United States. Unlike Puerto Rico, the Canary Islands and other Spanish territories are, for all intents and purposes, economically self-sufficient, mainly through tourism. Puerto Rico? Not so much. Many in Puerto Rico have acquired a taste for the good life afforded by US aid and investment. But would Spain be so generous? Get real.
But economics and its shared language aside, Adelante Reunificacionistas also touts the “shared history” enjoyed by Spain and Puerto Rico. So let’s consider Puerto Rico’s dark 400-year history as a Spanish colony.
The island we call Puerto Rico was originally inhabited by the (from almost all accounts) friendly Taino people. But the Age of Discovery that overtook Europe after Christopher Columbus’ first voyage in 1492 changed all of that; quickly, and with devastating results. Our island was “discovered” by Columbus on his second voyage to the Americas in 1493 and claimed for their Spanish Catholic Majesties, Ferdinand and Isabella. Columbus christened the island “San Juan Bautista” (“Saint John the Baptist”). Whether or not the result of a map-maker’s error, the island was subsequently renamed “Puerto Rico” and its largest European settlement became “San Juan.”
While all this claiming, naming and re-naming was going on, all was not well for the native inhabitants of Puerto Rico. Indeed, shortly after being added to the then-growing Spanish Empire, the Taino were quickly wiped out by European diseases, horrifying executions (to set an example for anyone else who might think about standing up to the Spanish “settlors”) and forced labor in aid of the conquerors’ unquenchable search for gold and resources. Ever industrious though, the Spanish quickly replaced their Taino “workers” with imported slaves from Africa to continue the all-important work of enriching Spain.
Thus was Puerto Rico’s wealth stolen, its native people eradicated, and slavery introduced to exploit the island’s rich Caribbean soil to grow massive amounts of sugar cane, coffee and tobacco for its Spanish rulers.
This unhappy system lasted for almost 400 years. Slavery in Puerto Rico was not outlawed until 1873. And even then newly “freed” slaves were required to provide uncompensated labor for another three years to pay their former owners for their freedom. The Spanish overlords did not give in easily to the mores of liberty emanating from the United States, which had just fought a great civil war to abolish slavery.
But by the late 1800s, the Spanish Empire was becoming a rotten husk of its former globe-spanning glory. And so, in 1898, following the very short Spanish-American War, Spain ceded Puerto Rico along with many other mistreated colonies, to an ascendant United States. The United States, ever magnanimous, gave Puerto Rico what it had never received from Spain. Where Spain had treated Puerto Rico and its people as nothing more than a large commodities plantation existing only to enrich its Spanish rulers in Spain, the United States built a real infrastructure. The US infused wealth. It granted Puerto Ricans US citizenship and Constitutional rights and protected the island with its vast and powerful military.
Still, Adelante Reunificacionistas complains that residents of Puerto Rico are politically disenfranchised because despite being US citizens, they cannot vote for President and have no voting representation in Congress. But is running back to Spain the answer? (Pretending, of course, that Spain would even welcome back an economically enfeebled Puerto Rico with open arms!) Puerto Ricans, as US citizens, always have the unfettered right to relocate from Puerto Rico to a US state if voting for President and having Congressional representation is paramount. And while the Canary Islands and other former Spanish colonies do have representation in the Spanish Cortes Generales, is it worth leaving the United States for? As observed above, Americans reviewing the nation’s ledger sheet might also hope for that outcome. But it’s sheer fantasy.
Puerto Rico’s economic state gives it very few options. Perhaps the members of Adelante Reunificacionistas and other Puerto Ricans who fantasize about a glorious homecoming to the Spanish motherland should spend their time more productively.
So here’s a thought. Maybe, just maybe, Puerto Ricans would be better served by fixing Puerto Rico’s own economy rather than forever relying on either a Spanish or US imperial nanny.