In the latter half of the 19th century, the Spanish Navy had built a series of ironclad warships that culminated in the barbette ship Pelayo in the 1880s. Following the destruction of much of the Spanish fleet in the Spanish–American War in 1898, Spain slowly began to rebuild its navy. In the early 20th century, the Spanish Navy built three battleships and planned several more; the three ships that were completed were the vessels of the España class. These ships were the smallest dreadnought-type battleships ever built. A further three ships of the Reina Victoria Eugenia class were authorized by the Navy Law of 1913, but the outbreak of World War I prevented these ships from being built, as Spain was heavily dependent on Great Britain for material and technical expertise. The three completed battleships all served in the Rif War in North Africa, where the lead ship, España, ran aground and was wrecked.
Following the end of the First World War, occasional plans for the construction of new battleships were proposed, including a small design deriving from Britain's powerful Nelson-class battleships. However, nothing had come of these efforts by the time of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Following the victory of Francisco Franco's Nationalists in that conflict, in which both of the surviving Spanish battleships—one serving on the side of the Nationalists, the other on that of the Republicans—had been destroyed, proposals for the construction of four fast battleships to an Italian design, as well as the construction of "large cruisers"—the only battlecruiser designs proposed for or by Spain—were made. However, the outbreak of the Second World War resulted in these plans being disrupted.