Haha, Spain's fall from world empire to third world country?  If Spain is a 3rd world country, what is America?  An 8th world country?

The loss of Spain's vast colonial empire greatly deprived the country of much wealth and it was soon reduced to one of Europe's poorest and least-developed nations. Over three-quarters of the population were illiterate and there was little industry except textile production in Catalonia. Although Spain possessed the iron and coal needed for industrial development, most was in the north and northeast and difficult to transport across the vast arid plain of the central Iberian Peninsula. Worsening matters were the lack of navigable rivers and a very rudimentary road network. British industrialists taught Spaniards how to extract iron ore while others studied the possibility of constructing a railroad system. Railroad pioneer George Stephenson, after conducting a survey of Spain, commented that "I have not seen enough people of the sort to fill even a single train." By the time a railroad network eventually got built, it merely radiated from Madrid outward and bypassed the major centers of natural resources.

High tariffs also dogged Spanish development, especially grain, of which imports were almost completely barred. The eastern provinces had to pay high costs for domestic cereals transported with the greatest difficulty across the peninsula while cheap Italian grain could have been easily imported from ship. Although Spain had been a major textile exporter in earlier times, the country could no longer compete with British and other producers and by the 19th century, most of its exports consisted of agricultural products. Catalonia was the only part of the country with any significant industry, but Castile remained the political and cultural center, barring major change.