Let's say I'm a Spanish sailor living in Santa María de la Antigua Darién in 1511. What did the town look like? Did it have buildings and forts like later colonial towns would or because this was the first one was it smaller in scale?
The town was a point of departure for many caravels setting out to explore the mainland. What did its harbor look like?
I'm really intrigued with life in one of the first Spanish colonies, thanks for your help in advance.
Santa María la Antigua del Darién started well, but all of the circumstances allied themselves against its governors and settlers. In the first few years, and the city did not last very much, discrepancies and feuds were common occurrences, particuarly between Vasco Núñez de Balboa, Martín Fernández de Enciso, and Pedrarias Dávila. We also need to bear in mind that it was just about the first settlement, as Nicuesa had tried to establish one in Veragua, but as very well expressed in the royal chart of January 17th of 1512, it was "unhealthy", so the settlers were ordered to move to Darién.
The efforts to create a city resulted in the creation of all the ordinary institutions you may find in a city, like a hospital with fifty beds, as indicated in this letter to the officers of the Casa de la Contratación of 1513, a cathedral, as the city was intended not only to be the first city but the capital of the captaincy of Tierra Firme, royal foundries for gold which is another way to say a mint, and a port too. A port was a capital infrastructure in order to get supplies from the neighbouring regions, but it was also of paramount importance, as Santa María la Antigua was intended to be the main port of Tierra Firme to ship goods to Spain, particularly gold. Amongst the efforts to keep a population, the neighbouts were exempt from the diezmo for the crops needed for their maintenance, by royal chart of January 14th 1514. That same day, by another royal charter the neighbours were allowed to own ships in order to get goods to Santa María la Antigua from Santo Domingo, Cuba, and more places. The port was busy in those early years, with goods and people arriving to Santa María, optimism was the general mood, and seeing that the settlement was prospering, the settlement was granted the title of City, which was an important matter administratively speaking. Some institutions had not been created yet, like the "audiencia" or court, but the residencias were still officiated by the Crown's officers in the main administrative building, which was the governor's see.
In 1514, Pedrarias Dávila took command, and arrived to the settlement with 2,000 new settlers in 20 ships. However, all of this good efforts proved fruitless, as within the next year 700 settlers died of a plague, that according to modern scholars may have been radiation poisoning. They lost their forces, they just could not get up, and eventually could not wake up. This made many settlers flee to different places to avoid the plague, which was a colossal blow to the city. By 1519, when Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo was made governor of Darién and intendent of the foundries (office he had already had in 1513), the city was in a state of disrepair, very sparsely populated. He put his best efforts, had his wife move with him to the settlement to prove his will to stay, started some construction projects to raise morale, but nothing could be done to save the doomed city. By 1524, only three people remained in the settlement. The Crown issued instructions that year so they would not abandon the city, but to no avail.
Most of the settlers in Santa María la Antigua were, as with any preindustrial settlement, farmers, as they were needed to support life there. There were also priests, a deacon, a chantre, and the ordinary staff for a cathedral, royal officers like governors, a supervisor of the mines and the foundries, people working in the port as builders and shipwrights, the kind of people you would find in places like Moguer, a village in southern Andalucía that was known for its port, and also for the large franciscan monastery.
Sources:
Fernández de Oviedo, Gonzalo (1526), Sumario de la Natural Historia de las Indias. Toledo: Ramón de Petras. Digitised here. Modern edition by Alfredo Rodríguez López-Vázquez and Arturo Rodríguez López-Abadía (2017, Madrid: Cátedra).
Fernández de Oviedo, Gonzalo (1535, 1547, and later), Historia General y Natural de las Indias. Edition by José Amador de los Ríos Digitised here (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1851-55).
Vignolo, Paolo and Becerra Virgilio, editors (2011), Tierra Firme. El Darién en el imaginario de los conquistadores. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
Now I am out of home, but later I shall answer this question, as sources are not that scarce, especially considering that Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, absolute graphomaniac and great chronicler, was the governor for a time