A Spanish remnant: Armet helmet

National Museum Jamaica (NMJ) and the Simón Bolívar Cultural Centre (SBCC) collaborated on the mini-exhibition, “A Snapshot of Jamaica’s Surviving Spanish Legacy.” Featuring fragments of Spanish culture that survived the 1655 English conquest, this selection of artefacts represents Spain’s long-lasting political, economic, and social influences on modern Jamaican heritage.

Spain’s political domination of Jamaica began with the subjugation of the Taíno. Armoured in plate and wielding steel swords, muskets, and gunpowdered cannons, the Spanish swiftly swept away the patchwork of independent Taíno cacicazgos (chiefdoms) due to their comparatively superior weaponry.

Spanish contact in 1494 ended Jamaica’s Stone Age as the indigenous Taíno were a Neolithic culture that did not practise metallurgy. Taíno greenstone celts, spears, stone axes, and flint-tipped arrows and knives were effectively overwhelmed by European artillery.

A replica of a medieval European combat helmet from the exhibition’s Spanish political legacy section symbolises the machinery of Spanish warfare and the technological shock that enabled their annexation of Jamaica.

The armet was developed in the 15th century and became the standard for men-at-arms throughout Western Europe, particularly in England, France, Spain, and the Spanish Netherlands. Alongside the more infamous Spanish combed morion, combat helmets formed recognisable parts of the “uniform of conquest” in the Americas at the start of the 16th century.

Haciendas (cattle ranches) rapidly replaced Taíno seaside and riverside villages as the Spanish secured their political control through the brutal military suppression of indigenous Jamaicans. The encomienda and repartimento systems deprived the Taíno of their land and enslaved them as labourers on these ranches.

In 1509, Juan de Esquivel, a lieutenant of Diego Columbus, founded Jamaica’s first Spanish colonial capital at Sevilla la Nueva, in modern-day St Ann’s Bay near the Taíno settlement of Maima – signifying the end of indigenous Jamaican political autonomy.

TITLES

The island now formed part of the titles granted to the House of Columbus when the notorious Italian explorer’s son, Diego, was made Viceroy of the Indies in 1511. At Sevilla la Nueva, the Spanish built a garrisoned fortress, the first church at St Peter Martyr, and, ominously, Jamaica’s first sugar mill.

Beginning in 1513, thousands of enslaved West Africans were trafficked into Jamaica from this original colonial base, resulting in a distinctly Jamaican sociopolitical melting pot that defined the rest of the island’s history. Today, the relics of Jamaica’s first Spanish city can be explored at the Seville Heritage Park.

By 1534, constant plundering by Spain’s political rivals in the Caribbean, along with widespread famine and disease, forced the capital farther south to St Jago de la Vega, today’s Spanish Town. This land was more fertile and militarily defensible. The new town lay just west of White Marl – Jamaica’s largest Taíno city – and would remain the island’s political centre until 1872, well after the 1655 English conquest.

Jamaica was, by then, an underfortified, underpopulated, and administratively neglected colony, and the English invasion was able to usurp political control due to these vulnerabilities. Spain made several attempts to retake Jamaica, including in 1657 when former Spanish governor, Cristóbal Arnaldo Isasi, hidden in the hills with the Cimarrones (Maroons), allied with Cuban reinforcements at Las Chorreras (the River Rapids), near present-day Dunn’s River Falls.

English General Edward D’Oyley defeated Isasi at this and another futile attack at Rio Nuevo the following year as by the 17th century, Spain was the nucleus of a decentralised empire that like the Taíno before them, was bureaucratically unable to repel the English. Las Chorreras later became the site of the English town Ocho Rios.

SPANISH TOWN

The new colonisers took over Spanish Town, establishing English colonial record-keeping at the Island Secretary’s Office in 1659. The English built on the initial Spanish layout, erecting the St Jago de la Vega Cathedral in 1666 on the ruins of the Spanish Chapel of the Red Cross. Old King’s House (the Governor’s official residence) was constructed on the site of the Spanish Hall of Audience in 1762, followed by the Old House of Assembly (that same year) and the Old Courthouse in 1819.

The 1838 Emancipation Proclamation was read from the steps of Old King’s House, constitutionally abolishing chattel slavery in Jamaica, in a Spanish-built square surrounded by these Anglo-Georgian buildings. When Kingston replaced Spanish Town as the capital, most of these structures were neglected and damaged by fires and natural disasters throughout the 20th century.

St Catherine’s parish capital was spared the worst of Hurricane Melissa in 2025, with no reports of damage to either the National Archives (the successor to the Island Secretary’s Office) or the remains of the aforementioned historical landmarks. Today, the Spanish Medieval influence is still visible in the town’s surviving architecture.

Spanish subjugation of the Taíno through their technological revolution, their commencement of the trafficking of enslaved West Africans, and their maladministration that led directly to the English conquest, summarise Spain’s Jamaican political legacy. The Spanish colonial imprint on Jamaican history also endures through Spanish Town, their last seat of power that remained Jamaica’s political centre for 338 years.

Prepared by John Shorter, curatorial assistant, National Museum Jamaica