The largest period of Spanish immigration was between 1901 and 1931, when 100,000 Spanish immigrants came to the United States.
Steamship travel, widely available in this period, made the trip faster and more comfortable than the sailing ships of the nineteenth century.
Most of those who came were farmers or tradespeople tired of poverty and political turmoil at home. Some were young men trying to escape military service.
For a time, Spain forbade emigration, but citizens fled anyway. Many left from Gibraltar, a British colony on the Iberian Peninsula.
