The idea that the Spanish empire lacked significant property rights and legal systems is ahistorical. A bloated legal bureaucracy and an infinite sprawling mora

The idea that the Spanish empire lacked significant property rights and legal systems is ahistorical. A bloated legal bureaucracy and an infinite sprawling morass of property rights systems were actually important characteristics of how the colonial empire operated. Those rights were also extended much farther than in the early British empire, including to women and indigenous peoples. The breadth and commonality of access to a legal system means historians have a rich source of primary historical documents for social history that simply doesn't exist for the early British empire. Some of those property rights are still with us today, like Los Angeles's pueblo water rights that helped make it a juggernaut in the water wars. There's relatively few of these remaining today not because they didn't exist, but rather because alta california and new Mexico territories were remote backwaters even by the standards of the Spanish empire and there was a concerted effort to disenfranchise those old titles for various reasons. UC Berkeley came from one such case.