Chapter 454

Because Portugal's geographical location was too remote, when all this happening within Portugal reached the central region of the European continent, the Spanish government and the Portuguese government had already officially started negotiations regarding the union of the two countries.

For Spain, whether it was the Spanish government or the public, they were naturally happy to see the union with Portugal.

Because the union was not a loss for Spain; Spain could master the say of the personal union no matter what, and did not need to worry about its influence in the personal union at all.

The public was also happy to see their country become more powerful; forming a personal union could also be considered opening up territory to a certain extent. With Portugal's size, once they joined Spain's sphere of rule, wanting to leave again would not be so easy.

Unless there was the full support of some super great power, and it could also defeat Spain in the war, otherwise it was absolutely impossible for Portugal to escape from Spain's palm.

As for the problem of whether the Portuguese would compete with the Spanish for job positions after Portugal joined the personal union, the Spanish also did not need to worry at all.

Because according to the labor law promulgated within Spain, all factories and enterprises located in Spain must ensure that more than 70% of all employees recruited belong to the Spanish.

In addition, when enterprises within Spain recruited employees, there was also a hard requirement that they must be able to speak Spanish.

Plus, the average academic qualification of the Spanish had already led the Portuguese by a large margin; even with fair competition, the Portuguese were highly likely to be unable to compete with the Spanish, let alone the enterprises within Spain already having preferential treatment for the Spanish.

Compared to the support of the Spanish public for this matter, the attitude of the public in other European countries was completely different.

Whether it was the British or the French, they felt worried about the news that the Portuguese government was conducting union negotiations with Spain.

One Spain already made people feel a headache; if Portugal were allowed to join Spain's sphere of influence, thereby letting Spain completely control the entire Iberian Peninsula, then who else would be Spain's opponent?

The complete Iberian Peninsula would be impregnable; by then, if one wanted to attack Spain, one would either have to cross the Pyrenees from France in the north, or one would have to forcibly land on Spain's coast.

No matter which choice it was, wanting to do it was not so easy. Although one could bypass the high mountains from both sides of the Pyrenees, the two sides of the Pyrenees were very narrow, and such terrain was very favorable for defense.

Spain only needed to stockpile tens of thousands of troops on both sides of the Pyrenees to be able to resist the attack of hundreds of thousands of troops.

As for landing on Spain's coast, that was even more difficult than the former. Wanting to land, one had to satisfy a prerequisite, and that was occupying naval superiority.

Judging by the combat effectiveness displayed by the Spanish Navy currently, including the British Empire, no country dared to claim that it could defeat the Spanish Navy 100%.

Unable to occupy naval superiority, naturally it was impossible to land on the coast; if discovered by the Spanish Navy, perhaps there would be no need to land, and they would be sunk directly in the ocean by the Spanish Navy.

Viewed this way, if Spain completely controlled the Iberian Peninsula, then wanting to attack Spain would require paying a greater price.

One would either have to attack by force in the land direction, and still need the permission of the French government. Or one would have to occupy great superiority on the sea surface, and under the circumstances of paying huge personnel casualties, perhaps it might be possible to forcibly land on Spain's coast.

No matter which method was chosen, the military would face huge casualties. If Spain were really allowed to completely control the Iberian Peninsula, then Spain would become a country that no European great power would want to provoke.

The German government was still happy to see this. The merger of the Iberian Peninsula was not good news for Germany, but it did not affect Germany at all.

Even the German government was willing to see the unification of the Iberian Peninsula, because such a Spain would pose a greater threat to France, and naturally would also destroy the relationship between Spain and the French government.

When the relationship between France and Spain was relatively good before, the German government had a headache for a long time because of this. Once France and Spain concluded an alliance, the difficulty of France would be infinitely increased.

Spain could easily transport various strategic materials to France through railways, and France could also obtain more powerful support from Spain, including the army and navy.

After Spain defeated Britain, almost all European countries increased their attention to Spain, and the German government was naturally among them.

That the Spanish Army could defeat the British Army was within the expectation of the German government, but that the Spanish Navy could defeat the British Navy was something the German government had not expected at all.

If the relationship between Spain and France remained so good, Germany could only place all its hopes on Britain, and spare no effort to facilitate an alliance with Britain.

After all, the threat brought by Spain was too great, and in some respects, it was even greater than the threat of France. If there was no help from a great power of the same level, in the confrontation with France, Germany really did not have full confidence.

Compared to Germany's expectation of the rupture of the Spanish-French relationship, Italy only had envy and jealousy about the fact that Spain was about to form a personal union with Portugal.

Originally, Italy felt that Spain and Italy were in the same boat, and both were very difficult to expand on the European continent.

But I didn't expect Spain to do a big one once it started. First, it defeated Britain and recovered Gibraltar, and then it directly brought Portugal into its sphere of rule.

Don't look at Portugal as only being able to be considered a remote and poor place in Europe, but this was after all a piece of European land with an area as high as 92,200 square kilometers and a population of more than 5 million.

Italy had to look at the face of the Austro-Hungarian Empire if it wanted a piece of land in the Balkan Peninsula, while Spain was going to annex the entire Portugal all at once, which made the Italian government only able to shed tears of envy.

At the same time, the Italian government also firmed up its ambition to expand on the European continent. Expanding northward was not realistic, so expanding eastward in the direction of the Balkan Peninsula should be possible, right?

Since the Austro-Hungarian Empire had already set its sights on Serbia and Montenegro, then Italy going further south, setting its sights on Albania, which was all mountainous, should be no problem, right?

The Austro-Hungarian Empire couldn't possibly have such a big appetite, setting its sights on Albania across Serbia and Montenegro, right? Since Spain was already so powerful, then relying on the relationship between Italy and the Spanish royal family, could Italy also obtain Spain's support, thereby plotting expansion in the direction of the Balkan Peninsula?

Compared to the Italian government, the Austro-Hungarian Empire government did not have so many thoughts. Their attitude toward this matter was still relatively neutral; to put it simply, they thought this matter had nothing to do with them.

No matter how powerful Spain was, it would not threaten the Austro-Hungarian Empire; after all, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had no needs in terms of sea power, and was separated from Spain by a distance of seven hundred kilometers on land.

Spain couldn't possibly directly punch through the territory of France and Italy, and then be adjacent to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, right? If Spain really had this ability, the Austro-Hungarian Empire naturally could not compete with Spain; at worst, it would just abandon a portion of interests and maintain a good relationship with Spain.

Among all the great powers, the only ones that had no reaction to this matter were Russia and the United States.

Russia was still busy with domestic unrest, and Tsar Nicholas II had no mood at all to pay attention to movements abroad.

Except for news from its ally France and its greatest enemy Germany that would occasionally be placed on the desk, most of the remaining documents on the desk were about unrest occurring in certain regions and the deployment of the military.

The reason why the United States had no reaction was because the United States government had not received relevant news until now.

After all, the United States and Europe were separated by an entire Atlantic Ocean, and it was impossible for the United States to obtain first-hand news from Europe. Plus, the United States had always pursued isolationism, and they would not care too much about things happening on the European continent, unless the two major military groups broke out into war.

Small things like this between Spain and Portugal were irrelevant to the United States government. After Spain and Portugal united, it would not affect the United States, and the United States naturally did not need to pay too much attention.

The one that performed most intensely was the British government. The British government clearly put forward an opposing attitude, and they even publicly stated that Spain's behavior was trampling on Portugal's sovereignty as an independent country.

Britain's various newspapers and media were also frantically smearing Spain; they rendered the union negotiations between Portugal and Spain as Spain's conspiracy, and even added the war between Britain and Spain into it, believing that whether it was the Anglo-Spanish War or the union between Portugal and Spain, they were all Spain's conspiracies to compete for world hegemony.

In order to reduce the responsibility for the failure of the war, the British government could be considered to have racked its brains. Such public opinion propaganda did indeed achieve a certain effect; at least a portion of the British public did believe that Spain's doing so did not completely respect Portugal's sovereignty as an independent country.

Of course, what the British public thought was not so important to Spain. The British government's point of view was also not important, because Britain at this time was already unable to prevent the union of Portugal and Spain.