Spain's decline: what were the causes?

Spain is in many places, not to say most, very thin of people and almost desolate. The causes are:

1. A bad religion.
2. The tyrannical Inquisition.
3. The multitude of whores.
4. The barrenness of the soil.
5. The wretched laziness of the people, much like the Welsh and the Irish, walking slowly, and always cumbered with a great cloak and long sword.
6. The expulsion of the Jews and Moors, the first of which were planted there by the emperor Adrian, and the later by the Caliphs after the conquest of Spain.
7. Wars and plantations.

(Francis Willughby: A Relation of a Voyage made through a great part of Spain [1673])