Welcome mural in Española, northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The city gains occasional notereity as "the first European capital in the New World." Conquistador Don Juan de Oñate did arrive in the Española area at the confluence of the Chama and the Rio Grande Rivers in 1598 and declare it a New World capital for Spain. But an earlier Spanish capital had preceded it 100 years earlier offshore from the western continental land masses in what is now the Domincan Republic. Photo by Carol Highsmith, 2021.