What was the impact of colonization on Spain and Portugal?

Portuguese colonization of Atlantic islands in the 1400s inaugurated an era of aggressive European expansion across the Atlantic. In the 1500s, Spain surpassed Portugal as the dominant European power. This age of exploration and the subsequent creation of an Atlantic World marked the earliest phase of globalization, in which previously isolated groups-Africans, Native Americans, and Europeans-first came into contact with each other, sometimes with disastrous results.