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Spain was the first European nation to claim what is now Texas, beginning in 1519 when Cortez was establishing Spanish presence in Mexico, and Alonso Alverez de Pineda mapped the Texas coastline. A few shipwrecked
Spaniards like Alvar Nunez, Cabeza de Vaca, and explorers such as Coronado, occasionally probed the vast wilderness, but more than 160 years passed before Spain planted its first settlement in Texas: Isleta Mission in
present El Paso, established in 1681. Gradually expanding from Mexico, other Spanish missions, forts, and civil settlements followed for nearly a century and a half until Mexico threw off European rule and became
independent in 1821. The red, gold, and white Spanish flag of this historic period depicts the lions of Leon and the castles of Castile.
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