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Spain established
the first European claim to what is now Texas in 1519 when Cortez came
to Mexico, and Alonzo Alvarez 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
the first Spanish settlement in Texas – the Ysleta Mission near
present-day El Paso – was not established until 1681. Until Mexican
independence in 1821, other Spanish missions, forts and civil
settlements gradually followed. After 1785, the red and yellow striped
Spanish flag depicted a shield with a lion (Leon) and a castle (Castile)
topped by a crown.
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