"Leadership determines the fate of a country." There has never been a truer quote. For a country depends on it's leaders for guidance and decision making. Phillip the 2nd showed a perfect example of how a terrible leader can royally screw up a country.
Phillip the 2nd was the ruler of Spain from 1556 to 1598 and had the opportunities to become one of the greatest rulers of all time. He came in at the right time period, the golden age of Spain, and at one point was the king of England, Spain, and France, and all of America belonged to him. He controlled almost all of the ships at sea and could have been immensely powerful if he had not let his fanatical Catholicism get in the way.
Phillip the 2nd was a devout Catholic that took it upon himself to head the Catholic counteroffensive, and he was willing to put in all the sweat, blood, tears, and not to mention money to see it through. He did not care about his country, or anything else for that matter, as much as he did for this. Phillip let economic and material matters slip away and deteriorate, thus beginning the downfall of Spanish culture and Spain. But, while Phillip could slowly destroy Spanish culture, he could not stop the Golden Age.
Spain entered it's Golden Age, and Phillip continued to pump money into the Catholic church. Phillip and Spain were so Catholic that the archbishop of Toledo had so much power and esteem, that he could address the king as an equal, and at one point it was estimated that one third of the population of Spain worked for the Catholic church in some way shape or form. Phillip built a new royal house for himself that was called the Escorial, it was a magnificent building that honored St. Lawrence (another sign of his fanatical Catholicism) because it was on that saints feast day that Phillip won a battle against the French. It was thirty miles from Madrid, on the plateau of central Castile, and was built in the shape of a grill, for St.