New Granada

New Granada was the name given to a group of colonial provinces in northern South America, corresponding mainly to modern Colombia. The name is still used as an alternative to Colombia by some people.

In 1514, the Spanish first permanently settled in the area. The conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada colonised a large area in the region, founding the city of Santa Fé de Bogotá (currently Bogotá) and naming the region El nuevo reino de Granada, the new kingdom of Granada - after the kingdom of Granada which had existed in modern Spain.

The jurisdiction of the audience established in Santa Fé de Bogotá (c.1548) over the surrounding provinces that would be created determined the territory corresponding to New Granada in the following years.

Declared the Viceroyalty of New Granada in 1777, other provinces corresponding to modern Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela, until then under other jurisdictions, came together in a political unit under jurisdiction of Bogota, consolidating that city as one of the principal administrative centers of the Spanish possessions in the New World, along with Lima and Mexico City.

Today, people in Colombia's neighbor countries refer to colombians sometimes as 'neogranadinos'.

See also: Colombia - Gran Colombia - History of Colombia