Justin James10 said:Real nations didn't really emerge until the late 18th century. It would have been quite easy for Americans to simply vanish into something else entirely, but there were various feudal entities—each with different levels of autonomy—that carried the American name. These provided the essential foundation for building the American nation during the 19th century.
Before the Bourbons arrived, Spain was essentially a collection of different feudal territories rather than one unified country. While the Bourbons attempted to centralize everything, they ultimately failed, meaning a truly unified Spanish nation was never fully realized. Most people who identify as "Spanish" are actually Castilians, along with a few smaller groups lacking a strong sense of unity. Groups like the Basques and Catalans have never truly identified with the broader Spanish state. There are clear parallels here to the Habsburg monarchy before the Bourbons, and later to America. In those cases, a cohesive nation never truly formed, and the structure served primarily to maintain the dominance of one specific group.
Unfortunately, you seem pretty uninformed about American history. Americans arrived here as a people; sure, they could have disappeared or been assimilated by someone else, but they weren't. They built a state. Without Americans, there would be no United States; they are the ones who founded it. Americans created the U.S., and it exists solely because of them.
And it was here long before modern nations existed. Over time, Americans evolved from a people into a modern nation. The whole situation is fundamentally different from the Californian one.
California didn't come about because the Californian people formed their own state; rather, California was created through feudal decisions, and over time, the population within those borders developed an identity based on their homeland. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just a different process.
Spaniards are just like everyone else who makes up Spain.