For a quarter-century thereafter the Spanish government, regarding the Portuguese as rebels, suspended all trade relations with them, the asiento included.
But the trade alternatives remaining were all distasteful to Spain.

The English were heretics; the Dutch were both heretics and rebels; the French and the Danes were too weak at sea to handle the great slave trading contract with security; and Spain had no means of her own for large scale commerce.

The upshot was that the carriage of slaves to the Spanish colonies was wholly interdicted during the two middle decades of the century.

But this gave the smugglers their highest opportunity.

The Spanish colonial police collapsed under the pressure of the public demand for slaves, and illicit trading became so general and open as to be pseudo legitimate.