José Antonio Piqueras, historian: “Spain must recognize its role in the slave trade”. Between 2.3 and 2.5 million people were transferred from African territories to Cuba and Puerto Rico.
The benefits of this exploitation allowed the formation of large capital and investments in the Peninsula. The boom in plantation crops is a very late phenomenon in the Spanish Caribbean, which was basically limited to Puerto Rico and Cuba until very late. In those countries, slavery is still practiced and there is a high level of complicity.