Philip the Handsome, with his marriage to the daughter of Catholic Monarchs and future queen Juana I, made possible the linking of Burgundian territories (including the Netherlands) with the Spaniards.

So the attempts to increase taxes to cover wars, the defense of their privileges and the spread of Calvinism created a focus of resistance that led to the general rebellion in the area against Spanish politics.

[3] Before the death of the King of Spain, the territory of the Netherlands, in theory the seventeen provinces, did not pass to his son Philip III, but jointly to his son-in-law Albert and his daughter Isabel Clara Eugenia, as he was part of the dowry, along with the Duchy of Burgundy at his wedding with Archduke Alberto by the Act of Assignment of 6 May 1598, in an attempt by the King to solve the problem generated by the insurrection of the Netherlands by establishing an indigenous branch of the Habsburgs.

And the southern territories under the sovereignty of the Habsburgs formed the Spanish Netherlands: Flanders, Artois, Hainaut, Namur, Luxembourg, Brabant, Antwerp, Mechelen, Limburg.

In 1621, Archduke Alberto died without having had descendants, and by the Act of Assignment of 1598,[5][6] the alleged sovereignty over the 17 provinces (in fact the southern part only), returned to the king of Spain and nephew of Isabel Clara Eugenia, Felipe IV, which coincided with the end of the truce and the beginning of Thirty Years War.

Special mention also requires the existence of an Instituto Cervantes, based in Utrecht, which organizes numerous cultural promotion and dissemination activities in Spanish.