christened Portobelo (Beautiful Port). This site would become a key port for colonial Spain in 1597, replacing Nombre de Dios which had burned and proven to be vulnerable to attack. Columbus ended his explorations at Del Retrete having spent just shy of two months in what would be Panama.
Soon Spanish explorations would converge upon Tierra Firma (also Tierra Firme, Spanish from the Latin terra firma, "dry land" or "mainland") which served in Spanish colonial times as the name for the Isthmus of Panama. Panama was explored and settled by the Spanish in the sixteenth century. In 1821, under the leadership of the then-colonel in command, José de Fábrega, it broke with the Spanish Crown and joined Simón Bolívar's Republic of Gran Colombia. When this dissolved in 1830, Panama remained part of Colombia.
Panama was part of the Spanish Empire for over 300 years (1513-1821) and Panamanian fortunes fluctuated with the geopolitical importance of the isthmus to the Spanish crown. Panama's importance would wane to insignificance by the middle of the eighteenth century as Spanish influence and power in Europe decreased and Spanish ships began to increasingly circle Cape Horn in order to reach the Atlantic. While the Panama route was short it was also labor intensive and expensive because of the loading and unloading and laden-down trek required to get from the one coast to the other. The Panama route was also vulnerable to attack from pirates (mostly Dutch and English) and from "new world" Africans called cimarrons who had freed themselves from enslavement and lived in communes or palenques around the Camino Real in Panama's interior, and on some of the islands off Panama's Pacific coast.
When Panama was colonized, the indigenous peoples who survived the many diseases, massacres and enslavement of the conquest ultimately fled into the forest or to nearby islands. Indian slaves were replaced by Africans.
Panama joined the independence bandwagon as did most of the other Central American countries, in 1821. While Panama was of great historical importance to the Spanish Empire, the differences in social and economic status between the more liberal area of Azuero, and the much more royalist and conservative area of Veraguas displayed contrasting perspectives. It is, in fact, known that when the Grito de la Villa de Los Santos occurred, Veraguas firmly opposed the motion for independence.
In 1821 the isthmus joined the recently formed Republic of Colombia which consisted of Venezuela, New Granada (present day Colombia) and finally Ecuador, which joined in 1822. The Republic of Colombia (1819-1830) or ‘Gran Colombia’ as it began to be called only after 1886, more or less corresponded in territory to the old colonial administrative district called the Viceroyalty of New Granada (1717-1819). While Panama had also been included in that scheme during the colonial period, for all practical purposes her economic and political ties had been much closer to the Viceroyalty of Peru (1542-1821). Nevertheless, Panama voluntarily joined Bolivar's project and became Department of the Isthmus, under a number of successive governors.
In September 1830, under the guidance of General José Domingo Espinar, the local military commander who rebelled against the nation's central government in response to his being transferred to another command, Panama separated from the Republic of Colombia and requested that general Simón Bolívar take direct command of the isthmus department. This was a condition to its reunification with the rest of the country. Bolívar rejected Espinar's actions, and though he did not assume control of the isthmus he desired, he called for Panama to rejoin the central state. Because of the overall political tension, Republic of Colombia's final days were approaching. Bolívar's vision for territorial unity disintegrated finally when General Juan Eligio Alzuru undertook a military coup against Espinar's authority. By early 1831, with order restored, Panama reincorporated itself to what was left of the republic—a territory now slightly larger t