Template:On this day - December 2

Hernán Cortés

• 1023 – In the mosque of Córdoba (present-day Spain), Abd al-Rahman V (brother of the late Muhammad II al-Mahdi) is elected the new caliph.
• 1547 – Death of Hernán Cortés, Spanish explorer and conqueror of vast territories of the so-called New Spain.
• 1617 – In Madrid (Spain), work begins on the Plaza Mayor.
• 1753 – Birth of Francisco Javier Balmis, Spanish surgeon and military physician who led the Royal Philanthropic Vaccine Expedition around the world (d. 1819).
• 1781 – Death of the Marquis of la Ensenada (Zenón de Somodevilla), Spanish politician (b. 1702).
• 1811 – In Chile, the republican general José Miguel Carrera dissolves the Congress and proclaims a dictatorship.
• 1831 – In Spain, General Torrijos and his followers land in Málaga with the aim of putting an end to the absolutism of Ferdinand VII and restoring the Spanish Constitution of 1812. In that city they are betrayed by the governor González Moreno and arrested.
• 1897 – Spain grants autonomy to Puerto Rico, which did not prevent it from being invaded months later by the United States on the pretext of "liberating" the island.
• 1902 – Creation of the Pan American Health Organization, under the name of International Sanitary Bureau, by the First International Sanitary Convention held in Washington, D.C. (United States).
• 1906 – The act delimiting the border between Spain and Portugal is signed.
• 1931 – In El Salvador, a «civic directory» overthrows and replaces the constitutional president Arturo Araujo.
• 1945 – Death of Saturnino Martín Cerezo, Spanish general and one of the Last of the Philippines (b. 1866).
• 1952 – In Venezuela, Marcos Pérez Jiménez, commander of the army, refuses to recognize the election results, carries out a coup d'état and begins a military dictatorship.
• 1956 – The yacht Granma reaches the coast of Cuba with 82 Cuban revolutionaries on board led by Fidel Castro, to undertake the armed struggle against the government of Fulgencio Batista.
• 1980 – In El Salvador, eight women (among them several American nuns) are raped and murdered by the «death squads» of the «Revolutionary» Government Junta.
• 1982 – In Madrid, Spain, Pedro Laín Entralgo is elected director of the Real Academia Española.
• 1982 – In Spain, Felipe González is elected President of the Government.
• 1987 – Death of Luis Federico Leloir, Argentine chemist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry (b. 1906).
• 1993 – In Colombia, the police Search Bloc locates and kills Pablo Escobar, supreme leader of the Medellín Cartel.
• 1999 – UNESCO grants San Cristóbal de La Laguna (Canary Islands) the title of Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
• 2001 – Death of Manuel Velasco Suárez, Mexican physician and politician (b. 1914).
• 2006 – In Colombia, the Chicamocha National Park (PanaChi) opens, one of the few natural parks devoted to ecotourism.