Venezuela has been a colony of Spain from its founding.
==== German colonization ====In the 16th century, the king of Spain granted a concession in Venezuela to the Welser family of German bankers and merchants
 The "Bolivarian Revolution" is named after Simn Bolvar, an early 19th-century Venezuelan and Latin American revolutionary leader, prominent in the Spanish American wars of independence in achieving the independence of most of northern South America from Spanish rule

