Laws of the Indies

The Laws of the Indies were the entire body of laws issued by the Spanish Crown in 1573 for its American and Asian colonial possessions, later compiled and expanded through the 1680 Recopilacion de las Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias. They regulated relations between Spanish settlers and indigenous peoples, protected native labor and land rights, and set out standard rules for founding new towns, including the grid-street and central-plaza pattern that shaped Spanish colonial city planning across the Americas and the Philippines.