I made a question 10 days ago on r/mapporn about the differences in capital city placement comparing Spanish and Portuguese America. Let me copy & paste the post (original: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/cl1cm4/diachronic_spanish_empire_map_understood_as_the/)
I find it interesting that while Portugal focused mostly on building fortified port cities, Spain seem to have had preference for building inland, highland cities. I remember reading that Portugal's pattern is the actual case: their colonial policy was indeed about finding good places for harbors along maritime trade routes, building a fortress and a town in it, and not bothering much with the countryside, leaving it to Jesuits, adventurers and the natives, and it's a strategy that makes sense. But looking at the location of hispano-american capitals, a lot of them seems to be in the middle of the mountains, and I wonder if this is the consequence of some kind of deliberate policy, such as looking for precious minerals. Look at this list here and notice how many hispano-american capitals rank among the top https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capital_cities_by_elevation .
Looking at the case of Brazilian capitals, all of those coastal capitals were created following the Portuguese habit of creating port cities, the few inland capitals from Brazil's colonial times can be explained either by the presence of precious minerals in the region (Ouro Preto, Cuiabá, Goiás city and Curitiba), or by the presence of amerindians in the region (São Paulo city); Oeiras, the former capital of Piauí, is the only oddball. Now looking at the history of those hispano-american capitals on wikipedia many of them seem to be explained indeed either by the presence of mines in the region, or of amerindians, but this still doesn't explain why there are so few port capital cities. Many hispano-american capitals in the mountains seem to be closely connected to some kind of port city that played a crucial role in connecting them with the spanish empire: Santiago has Valparaiso, Caracas has Maiquetia and Puerto Cabello, Bogota has Cartagena and Barranquilla, Mexico city has Vera Cruz, Quito has Guayaquil. So, why didn't they just use these port cities as capitals instead of the inland ones? Wouldn't it be cheaper to protect and develop the port city only? I remember reading on wikipedia that some of those were built in the mountains because the spaniards wanted a climate closer to the temperate climate that they knew, so they could avoid tropical diseases and cultivate temperate climate foods, which makes sense. Buenos Aires and Montevideo are in temperate climate already, so no need for mountains there, but this makes me wonder again whether the Spanish idea of colonization was different from the Portuguese one, because the kind of colonial capitals that they were building seem to be very different. I wonder, for example, if these policies were mostly made by Madrid, which is an inland highland city, and Madrilenos were interested on replicating their living standards.
The answers that I got weren't satisfactory, they just repeat what I said about natives, tropical diseases and gold, and feels like someone who just read Guns Germs and Steel and wants to explain the whole of History with those reductionist ideas. What I'm asking is whether they had radically different ideas of what colonization was, and whether this is due to internal differences. I mean, sure modern science can reveal that climate change might have played a role in the fall of Roman empire, but you can't try to explain the fall of roman empire with it and ignore what late Romans had to say about the fall of their empire. I'm not looking for the materialist explanations that supposedly move human behavior, this to me feels more like putting words in dead people's mouth, I'm asking instead whether this difference in patterns reflects some difference in how the Spanish and Portuguese wanted to organize their empire and societies, or if I'm just seeing patterns where there aren't any. I'm asking also what's up with the Spanish case specifically, because the places where they built their capitals (in the middle of mountains) seem counter-intuitive for a colonial empire (they would have to have port cities anyway to connect it with Spain), and looks more like they were trying to build nations, not colonies.
About Anglo america, it seems they mostly went for port cities too, which is what makes sense to me. But then there are USA southern capitals, which seem to be in the middle of plains.
Part 1: "I'm asking instead whether this difference in patterns reflects some difference in how the Spanish and Portuguese wanted to organize their empire and societies, or if I'm just seeing patterns where there aren't any."
Well, there is an easy answer and a hard answer to this question. The easy answer is yes, there are differing patterns in the colonial policy of Spain and Portugal, since there are separate institutions governing the operation and maintenance of the overtly Spanish and overtly Portuguese colonies. The Spanish colonies were governed by the Council of the Indies, while the Portuguese colonies were governed by the Council of Portugal. These councils would have to work with the different economic structures of their home countries, with the Council of Portugal only having to support the needs of the home coountry of Portugal, while the Council of the Indies having to support the various Habsburg needs in the Holy Roman Empire.
Now, to continue, we have to go to the hard answer. To contextualize the hard answer, most of the colonial expansion of Portugal during the 15th and 16th century was centered around the Feitoria, or a defend port-city that is also a trading post as described by you, previously, compared to Spain which made expansive Viceroyalties. Now, there is an explanation to this beyond the usual Guns, Germs, and Steel explanations, and it has something to do with the sizes of the home state.
Portugal, no doubt, was and still is inherently smaller compared to Spain land-wise and more crucially, population-wise. It had a lower population, which meant it had a lower amount of people that is able to actually colonize faraway lands. This lack of "disposable" population may have led to the idea of a centralized location of riches that can be defended with an economical forces of around 100+ people with perhaps a dozen Portuguese nationals, though this idea is an idea I only say basing from the population records of the Kingdoms from the 15th and the 16th century, when the colonial expansions of both empires were widespread.
A more convincing argument I can posit is the colonial goals of each respective country. Portugal, from an analysis of their sponsored voyages, is purely concerned to make money off their colonial ventures. Spain, meanwhile, had a mentality of "civilize the barbarians" on the New World by converting (mostly forcibly) the local populations affecting their colonial goals. This ideal of Spain is of course, more expansion-focused compared to the Portuguese one; why bother making centers of governance in faraway, inland locations with churches and Inquisitions, if not to make the process of making everyone Christian easier?
Let's look at a case in point, albeit this one is not in the new world entirely; the Spanish Colony of the Philippines, vis-a-vis the Portuguese Colony of Brazil. With the prevalence of port cities and concentrated settlements where the riches of the New world was concentrated and sent to Portugal, Brazil is purely a money-making venture, I would agree. However, looking at the way the Spanish colonized the Philippines, one may see that it is far from just a money-making venture. There was no need to encourage to convert Rajah Humabon, a local chief, to Christianity if your only goal was to make money, after all. There was no need to send hundred of Insulares to make schools, churches and even Universities (The University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines was established in 1611) if you only wanted to make sugar, potatoes and other agricultural stuff to sell back in Europe. If purely for money's sake, then there was no need to create multiple settlements in the archipelagos (like Cebu, Negros, Pangasinan, etc.) if you can just make a super-settlement in Manila (like Intramuros writ large) and/or Cavite, which had prime natural harbors.
In conclusion, the Spanish had a messianic goal of converting the natives wrapped in their colonial ventures which would have affected the rate of their colonies' expansion.
Please stand by for Parts II and III, I'm just going to work school I guess lmao