She was laid down at the Reales Astilleros de Esteiro in Ferrol, Spain, on either 16 October 1854[3] or 4 April 1855[4] (sources disagree) as a wooden-hulled screw frigate with mixed sail and steam propulsion.

[2] Reina Blanca put to sea for the first time on 30 November 1859 and operated under the command of either Capitán de navío (Ship-of-the-Line Captain) Manuel Sibila[5] or Capitán de navío Don Tomás [2] (sources disagree) as part of a Spanish squadron off Morocco during the Hispano–Moroccan War, taking part in blockade operations and shore bombardments.

[2] Reina Blanca next participated in a mulitnational intervention in Mexico to settle damage claims in 1861–1862, again as part of a squadron under Gutierrez de Rubalcava.

[2] Villa de Madrid became the flagship of the squadron's commander, Vicealmirante (Vice Admiral) José Manuel Pareja, whose predecessor Luis Hernández-Pinzón Álvarez had seized the Chincha Islands from Peru in April 1864.

On 27 January 1865 Pareja and a Peruvian government representative, Manuel Ignacio de Vivanco, signed the Preliminary Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Spain and Peru, known informally as the Vivanco–Pareja Treaty, aboard Villa de Madrid in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to settle claims between the two countries that instead sparked the outbreak of the Peruvian Civil War of 1865.

News of the defeat prompted Pareja to commit suicide aboard Villa de Madrid off Valparaíso, shooting himself in his cabin on 28 November 1865 while lying on his bed wearing his dress uniform.

In February 1866, Méndez Núñez sent Reina Blanca, still under Topete's command, and Villa de Madrid south to destroy the combined Chilean-Peruvian squadron.

In the resulting Battle of Abtao, the Spanish ships were reluctant to close with the allied squadron because of a fear of running aground in shallow water.

[2][11] Méndez Núñez decided to make a second attempt at destroying the allied squadron, this time with Reina Blanca and Numancia under his personal command.

At some point during these operations — sources disagree on whether it was on 6 March[14] or on the afternoon of 9 March — Reina Blanca captured the Chilean sidewheel paddle steamer Paquete de Maule, which was bound from Lota, Chile, to Montevideo carrying naval personnel assigned to join the crews of the Peruvian ironclad turret ship Huáscar and broadside ironclad Independencia there;[15] sources disagree on the number of personnel aboard, claiming both a total of 134 men[14][15] and of eight officers and 140 enlisted men.

[19] Several days of negotiations began on 26 April, during which Méndez Núñez granted neutral countries a four-day delay in his attack to give them time to salvage their interests in Callao.

[19] The Spanish ships used the delay to prepare for the attack: The frigates all lowered their topmasts and main yards and altered their rigging to reduce the likelihood of damage to their masts, set up on-board field hospitals, and painted over the white stripes on their hulls with black paint to reduce the ships' visibility and give Peruvian gunners less of an aiming point.

At 12:10, a shell the Spanish credited to Reina Blanca penetrated La Merced, the southern armored gun turret of Callao's defenses, detonating its gunpowder stores in an explosion that blew it to pieces, killing 93 men, including Peru's Minister of War and Navy, José Gálvez Egúsquiza.

[20] After suffering hits in her hull, masts, and rigging[2] and with Topete wounded,[19] Reina Blanca ran out of ammunition at 15:00 and withdrew from the firing line.

[13][16][21][22][23] The ships rounded the Cape of Good Hope in winter,[11] and by the time Reina Blanca had made port at Rio de Janeiro on the afternoon of 27 June 1866, completing a circumnavigation of the world,[23] 21 members of her crew had died of scurvy.

Late in 1868, Méndez Núñez relinquished command of the squadron to Contraalmirante (Counteradmiral) Miguel Lobo Malagando, who made Reina Blanca his flagship on 6 November 1868.

[26] On 29 October 1875 she embarked on a midshipman training cruise that included visits to Ferrol, Vigo, and Cádiz in Spain, Las Palmas on Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands, and several ports in the Mediterranean Sea.

[2] While anchored at Santander in July 1876, she was dressed overall to welcome the deposed Queen Regnant Isabella II, who returned to Spain after almost eight years in exile in France.

[2] On 25 September 1877, King Alfonso XII of Spain began a series of voyages aboard Numancia, escorted by Reina Blanca, the armored frigate Vitoria, and the screw corvette Africa.

During these voyages, the ships visited Alicante, Valencia, Tarragona, Barcelona, Rosas,[disambiguation needed] Mahón, Palma de Mallorca, Santa Pola, Almería, and Málaga.

[2] In 1886 she was chosen for a midshipman cruise to Northern Europe, and underwent alterations at the Arsenal de Cartagena in which her poop cabin was modified to provide accommodation for the midshipmen, the yards were removed from her mizzen, leaving her rigged as a brig, and electric lighting was installed, among other things.