I kept hearing that Spain under Philip II was considered a superpower and that it only stopped being so at the Battle of Rocroi. And yet if I look at every "front" they seem to be losing all the time. Against the Dutch they can't seem to defeat the rebel forces. Only minor breakthroughs which most were retaken by Maurice of Nassau (like the capture of breda). By the end of the 80 year's war, the Dutch were doing so well that most of them didn't want to stop the war.
That is not to say for the sea beggars and the enormous amount of piracy which was taking Spanish Gold and the Spanish were incapable of stopping them. And that is considering that the whole thing was a rebellion, not a well funded state.
The supposedly superior Spanish army couldn't stop that revolt, spent enormous time and blood taking cities and was constantly under funded.
The Ottomans also were beating the Spanish severely, both with barbary slave raids that demolished Spanish coastal population, general piracy and even major naval defeats by the ottoman. Even the touted battle of Lepanto was a group effort and a minor set back for the ottomans.
And not to say about the English. The Spanish armada is an unmitigated disaster in all fronts. They were constantly terrified of English pirates like Francis drake that defeated the Spanish in every front possible. The only solution was to fortify their ports and even then they were easily taken by later pirates like Henry Morgan.
This coupled with the fact that they even lost the throne of France to Henry IV who "converted" to Catholicism to end the civil war. And they went bankrupt multiple times from massive inflation, whilst other nations seemed to be able to fight without mountains of gold and silver and never went bankrupt. Did these countries simply not suffer from inflation?
As a final note, the Spanish seemed to be at their most incompetent on the very front that gave them their "power": The Americas. Pirates were easily taking Spanish ships full of gold whilst Spain did nothing. Pirates were devastating, pillaging and raping entire towns in the coasts of New Spain and constantly desecrated churches and the spanish simply took it. Portugal even lost it's Asian dominance because it was in an union with spain by the Dutch (who weren't a nation but a revolt ). Examples like the capture of the Madre de Deus is embarrassing.
I couldn't find a single notable victory of the spanish over pirates on wikipedia.
Sure they had lands everywhere, but they lost everywhere. I'm surprised they managed to hold on to what they had.
So all of that out of the way: Why were the spanish considered a superpower?
Edit: why was this post marked NSFW?
Spain was considered a superpower, it was a mighty empire with a formidable army, and a very efficient navy. Your post is nothing but cherrypicking facts to reinforce a narrative.
The 80-years war was enormously costly for the kings of Spain, but it is an absolute lie to say that Spain was losing all the time, when Spain not only won most of the battles, but also had a firm territorial control of the Meridional Low Countries (today's Belgium and a Luxenbourg). A few names of battles come to mind under the command of Alessandro Farnese, John of Austria, the Duke of Alba, or Cristóbal de Mondragón: Mons, Goes, Mechelen, Jodoigne, Haarlem, Gembloux, Lier, Empel, Steenbergen, Maastricht, and many more.
Defeating the Dutch rebels for good was materially impossible, the logistics for Spain to get the troops up there were absolutely insane, and the cost of the wars was monstruous. So large that the Crown was in permanent debt. When Spain was not fighting against the Dutch rebels, it was fighting against the English, the French, the Portuguese, the Turks, or all of them at once. And even against those odds, the Spanish army managed to keep control of the Meridional Low Countries, with current day Belgium being under Spanish authority until the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1714.
The situation against the Ottomans was not the one you paint. The Ottomans did support the Barbary pirates of Algiers, but it was not that they decimated the Spanish Mediterranean coast. Raids happened, and that is why Spain had a well coordinated system of watchtowers and there were some galleons, galleys, or galleasses on patrol. The raiding was, of course, bi-directional. Spain did sponsor corsairs, and even allowed some unortohodox shenanigans, with the most notorious captain being the Great Duke of Osuna, who raided the coasts of Greece and Turkey, getting into the Bosphorus.
If we go to the large scale conflicts, Spain had a firm control of the Western Mediterranean, with the possession of the kingdoms of Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, and having Genova as an unofficial protectorate. There were not that many open battles against the ottomans, it was mostly a war by proxy, with Spain keeping the knights of Malt afloat. There are only two major battles between the Ottomans and Spain: Preveza (a loss for the Spanish side, but without too many casualties), and the battle of Lepanto, where Spain footed the majority of the bill, put the most ships, most commanders, most guns, and most losses. It was a large battle that basically secured the Western Mediterranean.
The Spanish Armada was not succesful, but it was not anywhere close the disaster that has been painted through propaganda. The King's navy was composed of 135 ships, and 102 made it back to Spain. Only 2 were sunk by English naval action. The rest were sunken by the North Sea.
Drake was not terrifying, he was just a threat, as many other privateers, but definitely not the ogre some people pretend. The next year (1589), the English launched a counter-armada, with a fleet 50% larger than the one that had tried to invade England. Just in the battle of Coruña 50 ships were sunk and half the English force was killed or went MIA (some 14,000). Then they tried to attack Lisbon, where they suffered another crushing defeat.
Piracy and privateering were concerns of the Spanish crown, that is why they set up the Fleet system for the Indies in the 1520s. Instead of every one going on its own, the ships coming from America would form a convoy travelling once a year. A single ship is easy to prey on, a fleet of 60 is much more difficult. The convoy would be escorted by four armed galleons, one in the front, one in the rear, and one on each side. The system was effective, and only 3% of the ships of the Fleet system were lost, and only twice a whole fleet was lost (Matanzas 1626, and Rande 1704). So, your claim of pirates doing massive damage and depriving Spain of every penny they had is a categorical lie.
Edit: That gold caught me by surprise, especially considering that 19 days have passed since I wrote this.
Anyways: Thank you, kind stranger