In the movie Elizabeth, Phillip II remarks that he has sacrificed Spain’s forests in order to build his fleet. That’s an interesting remark, and I wonder how accurate it is. Perhaps someone knows.
While I was looking on the Internet for substantiation, I found A History of the Precious Metals, by Alexander Del Mar, in which he notes that
Spain was to the ancients what Mexico and Central and South America became in later ages to Spain, the Dorado, the richest mining country of the world, the place where gold and silver were found in greatest abundance. The fate of its aboriginal inhabitants, the subsequent struggles among leading nations for the mastery of its precious metals, the destruction of its forests for the purposes of the mines and the consequent exposure of its soil to drought and devastation, the neglect of agriculture in the absorbing pursuit of metallic wealth, and the resulting poverty and backwardness of its population, both aboriginal and colonial — can all be read by the nearer pictures which are accessible to us of Mexico and Peru.