Two centuries after independence, is colonialism still a valid explanation for Spanish America’s inequities and lagging economic performance? This chapter makes the case that the legacies of colonialism run at a deeper and much more local level than commonly acknowledged and publicly discussed. In particular, factoring-in the administrative practices of the Spanish Empire reveals how eighteenth-century office-selling undermined local governance in numerous ways: Shaping the spatial distribution of authoritarian and ethnic enclaves; the recurrence of violent conflict in certain areas; and ultimately, the under-provision of public goods leading to subnational differences in living standards we observe today. The chapter also outlines the limits of current explanations – focused on factor endowments, national institutions, or postcolonial state-building – to explain local-level differences. The chapter concludes with a roadmap describing the rest of the book.