Now from my understanding, during the 30 year war in the 1600s, the French and English would support both the Protestants and the Catholics during the war because those two didn't want Germany to plunder the Americas like the Dutch, English, Spanish, And Portuguese have been for a while now. I'm just wondering, how the fuck did the monarchs of both countries get away with supporting both sides? I know for a fact that England was a Protestant country at the time, so how did they get away with supporting the Catholics when they were losing?
Also, how did the Spanish even fight in this war? I thought that the Spanish were going into economic decline because the English destroyed the Spanish Armada and the Dutch just recently beat that Spanish ass so how did the Spanish afford to join the war?
Also, were the French protestant or catholic... And how did they manage to get away with supporting either side?
So... This is quite a complicated issue, I will try to answer some of your questions.
To the question of "how did France and England get away with supporting the other religious side" the answer is quite simply Realpolitik. I do not know a whole lot about England but I can talk about France. This is a map of Europe in 1618, as you can see Spain and Austria -or rather the lands of the Holy Roman Emperor- are two big players (and the two are held by two branches of the same family, the Hapsburg) and are the main rivals of France (and has been since the early 1500's). And yes France was Catholic.
While the 30YW can be seen as a religious war (which arguably was the case in some of the German States, after all Sweden entered the war to -officially- defend Protestantism) it was also a political war. It was depicted as the fight of autonomous German Lords against a tyrannical Emperor abusing of his power. To keep it simple let's say that the German States wanted the emperor to rule only in name, while the Emperor try to increase his influence in Germany (for example on religious matters). This narrative was helped by France who was the self proclaimed defender of "German Liberties" (because it meant undermining the power of the Hapsburg). The fact that the majority of the German States fighting against the Emperor were Protestant was secondary to the Catholic French, because it meant fighting the Hapsburg. For the same reason France allied itself with the Protestant Sweden: they both hated the Austrians and Spanish. It's of course a simplification but that's the general idea.
For the question of Spain yes Spain was indeed in an economic mess... but keep in mind that it still hold what is now Belgium, a big part of Italy and all of South and Central America. It was hard (and it cost them Portugal) but they still managed to fight.
