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Heechee's Serial Experiments

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The Long and Hard Dance
This is intended as a homage to StrategosRisk's "Smoke and Daggers" scenario, which depicts a really multi-sided Cold War. Trying to depart from the original as much as possible, I've taken the concept to its logical extreme, outlining a Cold War with thirteen sides.

It's just a rough scenario, but let's say it involves lots of butterflies during the Roaring Twenties, and then.... well, hilarity ensues.

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Business as Usual
In this timeline, the coup against Allende in Chile was a failure, and the Chilean successful experiments with a central planning assisted by a computerized system eventually gave a push to the Soviet academic trends that had been calling for a Cybernetic Communism since the de-stalinization years. Still, Cyber-Communism would be an incremental process that would meet systemic shackles until well into the 80's, that would only be seriously applied in Chile, the USSR and East Germany, and that would lag behind Western progresses in the field until today. Full automation would not be a reality in Chile nor in the USSR until the late 90's. Still, as a side cultural effect, there's a significant number of geeks in the West devoted to the Soviet videogame industry, as much as smuggling of Western videogames to the Soviet Union is a thing, especially in Finland.

Eastern Europe was swept by a democratic wave in the late 90's (in a messier, more violent way than IOTL): WWIII was avoided by a joint American-Soviet pact that bound the transitional countries (plus Yugoslavia and Finland) to a neutralized economic union, a geopolitical No Man's Land, and the economic setbacks the Soviet Union itself had suffered IOTL since the 1970's were either averted or limited enough for it to survive in a relatively good shape. The fall of the Iron Curtain is not seen as the end of an era nor of a system, but as a mere geopolitical readjustment: the beginning of the so-called Fourth Phase, our current times.

Post-Maoist China, debilitated by the raw power struggles of the 70's and 80's, had fallen rather behind, and by the late 80's a series of student protests brough an all-out regime change, not without suffering loss of territory from the Nationalist wave that spread from Tibet and swept Central Asia. By 1995, Tibet, Sikkhim, Kashmir, Ughyurstan and the Sister Republics (An Assamite® production) were independent and closely bound countries. The resulting China is an extremely unstable place, both politically and economically, and a haven for entrepreneurs, mafiosi and people with a bit of both: some people call it the Wild East.

Political Islamism is a phenomenon mostly reduced to Iran, Palestinian terrorists and some Western allies in South Asia and the Middle East. Egypt has pursued a revamp of Panarabism in the shape of a transnational, non-aligned North African bloc. Egypt (now nuclear-armed), Libya, Socialist-Destourian Tunisia and FLN-ruled Algeria are bound by a political forum and monetary union, one that doesn't doubt to play dirty in the game of international destabilization. Zaire has moved closer towards actual non-alignment, and so has India. Along with the non-aligned Socialists, the Post-Maoist Asian landscape and a Japan that moves towards a Pacific hegemony, it shows a growing trend towards multipolarity that might end up defying the old bipolar geopolitical order should said trend continue.

It's the early 21st century, and after a couple of militarized space stations, two main information networks (the USSR has its own Intranet) and an American permanent Lunar base, the game whose winning move is not to play is still showing its ugly head. None the less, the Equilibrium of Terror is doing the hell of a job when it comes to equilibrating...

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Spanish Revolution
"In the War of Independence, Spain chose the wrong enemy. We lacked, in the right moment, a guillotine in the Puerta del Sol, slaughtering many people and forcing many others to be free in spite of themselves"

-Arturo Pérez-Reverte.

ITTL, Godoy doesn't intercede in prince Ferdinand's favour in 1807 and he is exiled by his father, being shipwrecked and dying in his way to the Americas, rumors that this wasn't an accident spreading very soon. Opposition to Godoy and Carlos, whithout the figure of prince Ferdinand, acquires openly republican tones. There is an alternate Mutiny of Aranjuez in 1808 in which Carlos IV and Godoy are captured and publicly executed. In spite of borrowing many elements from the French Revolution (such as this new, fancy and clean execution method), this new state was openly hostile to Napoleon and the presence of French troops in Spain. The newborn republic would face one of its greatest challenges within its first month of existence.
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The Unstable Peace
Not an Alternate History, but a Future History scenario (written from a 2011 perspective). Some key elements:

NAFTA was repealed, and the USA have lost much of their influence in the world, if they're still a great power. Canada joined a EU-esque trade organization revolving around the Pacific Ocean.

In Mexico, the Sinaloa Cartel acquired hegemony over the other cartels, and a balance of inter-relations between the Government and the Cartel started. For a time, it worked... until a revolutionary wave in the 2030's propelled a divorce between both. Now, central and south Mexico are part of an internationalist, -varying degrees of- lefty Latin American union, descendant of ALBA, while north Mexico (internationally known as the Sinaloa Regime) is a true narco-feudal state.

Apart from Mexico, "21st Century Socialism" reformed and eventually extended to Peru and through Central America, where the Bolivarian Ideal eventually brought the reunification of Central America as a real possibility. Cuba has liberalized and reformed around a form of democratic socialism. The CARICOM also brought Confederalism to the Caribbean, but this time out of interdependence and pragmatism, facing more reckless climate patterns. The rest of America belongs to the capitalist-democratic MERCOSUR, that is in the road of becoming a sort of Brazilian co-Prosperity Sphere, to Argentina and Chile's dismal.

In spite of the grim predictions of the early century, the euro debt crisis ultimately brought Europe closer in its integration, and kept expanding, partly due to fear of a Russian backed, State-Capitalist EU analogue.

China suffered its own bubble burst, followed by political unrest and a regime change. In 2060, the next big one seems to be India, that has created its own economic union and has benefited from the messy Pakistani collapse. In spite of the efforts on Afghanistan of the early century, Pashtunistan and Balochistan are under full Taliban control. Indonesia has consolidated its power in the South East Asia region, though West Papua ultimately escaped from its control. Iran finally suffered its own orange revolution. North Korea, under even heavier sanctions, is still a so-called Hermit Kingdom.

The full consequences of the Arab Spring ultimately redrew the map of political alliances and antagonisms in the Arab world [1]. The Arab Spring states, after years of political turmoil, backlash, unstability and war (a period known as the Arab Winter), eventually sought a refunding of the Arab League, trying to increase international cooperation and interdependence to secure their achievements against sectarian and tribal violence (Iraq joined the NAI after a process of stabilization that took decades, and Algeria had its own political revolt in the 2020's). The NAI is democratic in general terms, while the remaining AL nations are more traditionalist and oligarchical to varying degrees.

The West African Confederation is the succesor of the ECOWAS, after a period of stabilization and the growth of the regional powers of Nigeria and Ghana had a positive impact on the area. The ADC is an EU-esque organization in which Botswana, Ethiopia, East Africa and South Africa (which invaded and put Zimbabwe under a "special needs" management after her descent into total chaos, being fully incorporated by 2060) play a big role, but it suffers from great disparities between members. Central Africa is still a mess.

The world has phased out fossil fuels, is largely fusion-powered and is using geo-engineering to keep the effects of climate change at bay. Medicine and biotech are evolvig very fast, and the boundaries between man and machine are blurring. The world enjoys a relative peace, but... for how long?

[1]Retrospectively, one could say the POD is the Syrian Civil War being averted by Al-Assad fleeing the country in the face of defections. The Arab Winter still happened, but Syria and Iraq never collapsed.

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Spanish Soviet Union
A series of flags for an idea I had, with a possible POD during the Spanish war of Sucession. ITTL, the Spanish empire remained under the Hapsburgs and kept its colonies, but it ultimately suffered a *Communist revolution. Those are the flags of the subsequent Unión de Repúblicas Comuneras and its constituent republics.

The wheat pod and the cog wheeel are TTL's symbol for Communism. The cross is a modification of the Hapsburg Burgundian cross, and it represents the sails of a windmill. The cross is purple, for ITTL they fell into the same misconception of OTL, that pictures the Comuneros' banner as purple instead of red.

The Spanish text uses an alternate, phonetic spelling.

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To End All Wars
A done to death scenario, but anyway I wanted to do it once more: The Central Powers win WWI.

I've assumed, unlike in other versions of this scenario, that Austria-Hungary was ultimately too weak to survive. Not so the Ottoman Empire, though Arabia, or at least part of it, would break free in the long run, and Egypt would affirm itself as a neutral, independent monarchy against both the British and the Ottomans. Eventually, it would adopt a form of theo-democracy and resort to quite brutal forms of cultural assimilation in South Sudan. Between the defeated powers, Britain suffered a hard crisis that turned into a Communist revolution (the US had it own version of OTL's New Deal). The Commonwealth would survive overseas ruled from Canada, and Britain's path would heavily inspire Subhas Chandra Bose and India at large, that would become this world's early version of our People's Republic of China, particularly regarding its adoption of a Socialist market economy.

France went revanchist and Neo-Reactionary instead, as much of Southern Europe, and developed pan-Latin ideas, that would survive and grow stronger after the *Fascist wave was eventually swept by a mix of generational and socioeconomic shift with outer meddling. Russia suffered a revolution after the Great War, but the Whites won with German assistance, regarded as a lesser evil. Russia resembles its OTL Putinist incarnation in many ways, except under a form of constitutional monarchy.

There was no WWII, but as IOTL, there was a Pacific War with a decisive American victory. The Republic of China survived, the environment being much more adverse for Mao's survival, but this China stays a bit behind OTL: between a rising India and a Russia favored by the Americans (because the enemy of the Germans was their friend), it never truly opened to the international markets the way it did IOTL. Decolonization happened later, in a messier way and with no international organization pushing it, which left several remnants, now fully enfranchised and considered integral territories of their respective nations.

The 20th century has been largely German-American, and the late century has seen the collapse of the British regime and a latter English Restoration. While The US has mostly, with the most notable exception of the Pacific War, relied on diplomacy, trade and soft power, as well as promotion of regional powers as trading appendages (notably Mexico and its Caribbean Assistance Council), Germany has been much more hawkish and directly interventionist in the global stage. Now pundits say the next century might be Indian, and they might be right.1690374719577.png
 
No Pasarán
A favourite and classic: Republicans win the Spanish Civil War. This should have been a full TL, but I'm a lazy bastard who came here for the maps. I've fleshed out the global situation in the map, as my vision is focused on this alternate Spain...

...which managed to get just a bit more support from France early in the war, just enough for the Republic to fully control the Strait of Gibraltar and the African Army to stay in Africa. The first phase of the war is one of slow Nationalist advancement towards Madrid and of attempts to get strong in Andalusia, but once the Republic put its shit together and more or less controlled the ongoing social revolution, the tide turned. Toledo and Badajoz were reconquered, Salamanca was the scenario of one of the harshest battles, and by early 1939, with the capture of Burgos, the Surrendering of Galicia, the Republican-backed revolts in Spanish Africa and the exile of Sanjurjo to Cuba, the war was over.

Yet the Republic had still turbulent times ahead. It took time to control the guerrillas and their bloody acts of retailation. The moderate sector of the PSOE and the liberal leftist parties had to cope with those who wanted a full people's repulic, who rapidly fell from grace after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the heated splits and purges it unleashed. War was calling to Europe's gates, and intervention was heatedly discussed. It was finally decided to contribute with logistical support and with brigades of volunteers, as Spain's recovery was the first priority. Only Hitler's disinterest about the latin races and blind luck prevented Germany to declare war to Spain. The remains of the right wing, mostly a decimated CEDA, oficialized their National Alliance of loyalist rightwingers, while the excuse of keeping strong and together before the Fascist menace had the same effect in the Republicans and Socialists. Including a purged and compliant Communist Party, and along with a constitutional reform that gave more power to big coalitions, the Unified Popular Front was born, and it was born to win election after election after election. One of its first measures was the passing of a pack of constitutional reforms, which effectively turned the 1931 regime from a parliamentary to a presidential system.

One might say that the Spanish economic boom that lasted from 1952 to 1968, the setting of a true welfare system in Spain, the (eventually crippled) Hipanidad Union, were all thanks to the UPF's political leadership and hegemony... but it also brough an entrenchment of cronyism, corruption and political emasculation to Spanish society, all of which exploded with the 1968 oil crisis and the new UPF victory, in a Barcelona that still remembered the revolutionary days and was a stronghold of Anarchist opposition. The Left-Libertarian revolution known as the Catalan Spring, brought by the students of the University of Barcelona, soon spread to Madrid, to Paris, to Mexico City, where it marked the beginning of the end of the PRI. In Spain, though, it slowly vanished without the political muscle that a party brings. Some in that generation noticed that, and founded the Party for a New Republic as an alternative left-wing force in 1974. At first marginal, but after the first defeat of the UPF in 1980 and the Neoliberal reforms of the 1980's, it gained political muscle. Some historians mark the beginning of the contemporary Spain not in 1968 nor in 1980, but in 1992, the date of the first PNR victory.
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Good Winds and Good Weddings
A world where Isabella I of Castile marries John II of Portugal instead of Ferdinand II of Aragon, alienating Joanna La Beltraneja and avoiding the War of Castilian Sucession, resulting in an alternate colonial path, a lesser Hapsburg influence and an alternate balance of events in Europe. In the contemporary era, Europe is divided between a Spanish-British-German alliance, and a French-Aragonese-Hungarian-Russian one. Spain, which has been ruled to this day by the house of Aviz, was more stable and powerful, while Aragon, Catalan-centered and a French yes-man by most accounts, has a great influence in the Mediterranean. England, which stayed Catholic, had its own Republican revolution after an incompetent king tried to abolish the English parliament, while the French Valois knew how to read between the lines and gradually abandoned Absolutism: British Republicanism was in this world closer to the civic and radical ideals of OTL France than to the "Christ, no Man, is King" approach of OTL. *Colombia's Republicanism started with an "No Church but the Church of the Soul" tone and significantly mellowed out afterwards: Most independent American republics gravitate between Colombia and Tawantinsuya, the exception being the martial and caste-based Meshick, disliked by all of its neighbors. *Socialism has seen limited influence as an Indigenist anti-imperialist movement (led by Tawantinsuya, a surviving, increasingly mixed Inca nation), and marking part of the political route in the Mughal Empire and a Meiji-pulling Kongo: though there are very few, many of the postcolonial nations are fully or partially on board -even where Metropoli-descended elites are still sort of entrenched, as a way of legitimization. Still, this world's colonial powers, while definitely extractive, had taken much more seriously the idea of market-building and the consensus gravitates towards gradual enfranchisement via local elites: most crucially, the transatlantic slave trade got substantially reduced in its cradle as Portugal got integrated in a country that, while hypocritical, wasn't tolerant about it between its own subjects. Colony-building was much more widely understood as a traumatic thing that required greater collective efforts that could not be delegated, and precisely because of that, it persisted better -but that may have soon come to an end. It should be noted there is a post-Ottoman *Fascist Pan-Turkic movement that tends to see itsef as a mechanized khanate: The Ottomans lost their grip on the Mediterranean much earlier, so they turned towards a Great Game in the Indian Ocean they lost against the Mughals and the European powers, fueling deep currents of identity-searching and revanchism that ended with the Caliph's head on a pike. As for the colonial powers themselves, paternalistic Conservatism or heavily Dirigist *Leftist ideas are the usual consensus.
Constitutionalist Russia has made very clear it will take any further Turanian expansion as a declaration of war; the second hottest spot is that of the border claims of China and the Jurchen Republic, both medium powers in their own right and with few, but more than enough nukes pointing at each other.

There wasn't any World War per se, but proxy wars fought with mechanized warfare and trade wars have been a common happening for decades. The world is more advanced in engineering and biotechnology -though that might not be immediately apparent in civil life- and the world overall enjoys a better wealth distribution. It's anyone's guess how the power balances and the equilibrium of the political movements might shift once the decolonization process is complete.
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The Northern Secession
A little scenario I did inspired by various elements, including DoD and a recent TL about an independent New York. Here it goes.

The POD takes place in 1854, when the Republican Party fails to materialize, causing anty-slavery activists to be more militant and outside the system, and a more agrarian, slavery-based official policy well into the 1860s leads to a very different American Civil War in which it's the North (and the West) who secedes, a war won with European support.

Fast-forward to the 20th century. Along with a Canada that eventually broke ties with Britain, the seceded countries (New England, New York, Vermont, California, Pacifica, and a *Confederate States of America that includes a good chunk of the Midwest) form a close political and economic union similar to OTL's Eropean Union. The United States of America are a regional power with its influence over Central America, but they're pretty much resentful and isolated when it comes to the global stage. Slavery was abolished in the 1890s and there was an apartheid system that lasted until the mid 80s. It's a mostly agrarian, regressive and militarized country with serious authoritarian tendencies. South America was greatly affected by the new balance of power in the Americas, leading to a different set of wars and outcomes (though Paraguay got gang-raped as IOTL), out of which the greatest benefitted was Bolivia, TTL's regional power in South America.

France won the Franco-Prussian war (though not as much of a smashing victory as it was OTL for Prussia) and after a wave of Syndicalist Socialim swept much of Northern Europe in the 1900s, a still Bonapartist but rather more democratic France has been one of the main superpowers for much of the 20th century, mostly resisting decolonization through an integral, eventually enfranchised and developmentalist approach to Africa. There's a loose form of British Commonwealth in exile, officialy based in South Africa, but increasingly becoming an Indian Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Socialism here is divided between a form of radical Social Democracy in which there are syndicates instead of parties (The main example being the USR), the good old single-party dictatorship (South Brazil leads this line of thought), and a weird Chinese model of Socialist Monarchy influded by Neo-Confucianist philosophy.
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The Guns of López
An ISOT/ASB one. Basically, a time traveller from the future travels to 1864 Paraguay, in the eve of the War of the Triple Alliance, and gives Francisco Solano López advanced weaponry from his time and privileged information about the future. Hilarity ensues.
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The Mediterranean Cold War
A challenge in the AH forum (depicting a region where two opposing powers share a border) inspired this. It's essentialy a United Arab Republic wank with a POD in 1960's. It can count as a redux of the 1000 battlefronts map, but it's a simplified scenario that does away with many of its ideas, such as the USA-Europe split and the rise of Baathism. It qualifies as an Eurowank as well, as the growing menace of the UAR greatly accelerated and thrusted Europe's integration.

The UAR's claims over Ceuta, Melilla and Israel make those two powers, the United Arab Republic and the European Federation, irreconcilable enemies, two facing worlds around the Mediterranean.
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Menshevik World
This map is the result of my confrontation with a recurrent AH tendency: Russia always gets the short end of the stick, and when it doesn't, it takes the shape of an Evil Empire of sorts.

In this world, due to a mechanical fail, Lenin's train blew up before he could publish the April theses, with the result of the Russian Revolution being taken over by the Menshevik faction, which dedicated to a rather different programme: setting the institutions of a Russian bourgeoise democracy (with the constitutional democrats as a tolerated opposition) while encouraging the syndical movement and dedicating to the improvement of the worker's conditions, which, they hoped, would lead to the worker's enlightement and a Socialist revolution when the time would come.
In short, they set a social democratic system. Just that ITTL isn't called that, but just Socialism, in the old, Marxist sense.

That led to a rather different interwar ideological atmosphere. For a start, the Bolshevik faction separated itself from the 2nd international as a fringe movement, and would prove itself a rather popular inspiration for third-worldist guerrillas. Fascism still emerged in Italy, but Hitler was assasinated ITTL before the Munich coup (upheavals in Germany taking a different form), And a different-shaped German Völkisch Freedom Party became the rising star of German Fascism in the early 30s. In spite of a diplomatic crisis after an alt-Sudetenland annexation, it never got beyond there, and there was no WWII. Also, Anarchism did much better in Spain ITTL, to an extent there was a short but pivotal civil war between Anarchists and Republicans, after which the Spanish Republic was put under a "special circumstances" Conservative junta that reverted all the Republic's former measures.

France, after strong political convulsions in the 30s and early forties, underwent its own socialist revolution (they didn't join the International due to France being, as the general-secretary Camus pointed out, "already building a socialist stage, not paving the road to it" Yeah, sure, that's the reason). The short civil war that came was mostly fought in Africa, which made easy for the socialists to present themselves as the Liberators of the Opressed Africans. It's just that the Algerians and the Mauritanians, with clashing traditions being used as an excuse for colonial atrocities, ultimately didn't buy it. France's system is not Communism as we know it: it borrows a lot from the Anarcho-Syndicalist ideary and it as a quite left-libertarian discourse, but at the same time has as much unilateralism and no-love-for-dissent as one could expect.

Japan was a most weird case. Mao died much earlier ITTL, and the struggles between the Communists and the KMT, as well as the prudence of not attacking the United States, allowed Japan to carve out their mainland empire... just to find themselves rotten with a stagnated economy and dozens of insurgence focuses. In the late 60s a reformist thought emerged, with a strange mix of dharmic philosophy applied to Japanese traditions, bolshevism, and the same old imperialist militarism with one cup of humanitarian bona fide and two cups of racist condescendence. The ideology (wich could be roughly translated as "obliteration of the self") changed the face of the Empire. More exactly, now it has the kind of face that gets stamped by a boot forever...

The British Empire successfully reformed into a commonwealth bound by the Sterling Pound, but lost India (in a much nastier way). The German regime became unpopular in the fifties and was replaced by a "democratic" (more like "plain old militarist conservative") coup. the Italian Empire imploded in the 60s, after the power vacuum led by Mussolini proved unsolvable, and the Socialist and Communist guerrillas started to get strong in the Mezzogiorno. The Spanish justa ultimately stepped out, and a nasty Basque issue got solved by an independence referendum. The United States recovered from the Great Depression much slower and mass consumer society never fully catch on (the mainstream discourse being one of almost Randian triumphalist social darwinism). Afghanistan, Iran and part of the Arab world have gone throught the path of secularization and Westernization against a perceived Russian Offensive. Much of South America is under a net of Operación Condor-like military juntas.

It's 2010, and most Socialist nations have pretty much abandoned the idea of a Socialist revolution altogether, as the living standards standards have made it unnecesary. The mainstream (2nd International) lecture is that Social Democracy *is* by itself a Proletarian dictatorship: A system in which "the proles" have a private car, a bank account, a personal computer and summer vacations, where they constitute the main electoral force and the main rank where politicians come from in a state with participation in most resources, what else could be? The Western nations other than France, turned off by Marxist discourse, had followed a much more jingoistic and Libertarian-Conservative path. Things didn't go down the gutter in the United States and other like-minded nations in great part because worker's unions became giants capable of competing with the robber barons in a much more manufacture-oriented country, if that meant said unions became something of a robber baron themselves.

With an impressive living standard and freedom records, as well as an intimidating military force and as the leaders of the most relevant international organization, The United Russian Republics are the only superpower deserving of such a name, and in spite of political hostilities that never went as far as IOTL, Russian arts and literature are renowned everywhere: though there is not a single lingua franca, every cultivated person, no matter their bithplace, is expected to be fluent in Russian.

The world is a bit more backwards than OTL (10 to 15 years), but there is much more investment in outer space, and the Internet equivalent is about as developed as IOTL. On a curious note, due to the greater reputation of Marxism, Secularism and social Darwinistic theories of many kinds, Atheism is much more prevalent almost everywhere.
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Cielos Carmesí
A scenario inspired by Crimson Skies, featuring a balkanized, Dieselpunk Spain from a world in which the Carlists won the first (and the only ITTL) Carlist war, and in the late 1860's the country imploded in a multi-sided civil war. Featuring:

-Kingdom of Spain (Carlist): The remnants of the former regime. Reactionary, ultra Catholic and Absolutist. Capital: Zaragoza (provisional).

-Kingdom of Spain (Elizabethian): loyal to the other branch of the Bourbon dynasty. More democratic than its Carlist counterpart and dominated by Liberal/Moderate bipartisan politics, if very conservative and using a property-based suffrage system. Capital: Valladolid (provisional).

-Spanish Republic: A more-or-less Liberal, French-styled Centralist republic under a universal suffrage system. Virulently anti-Bourbon dynasty. Capital: Valencia (provisional).

-Communard Republic of Spain: A Jacobin, *Commie state that arose from the discontent of the peasants working the large estates of Andalusia. Authoritarian and guillotine-friendly. Capital: Seville (provisional).

-Catalan Republic: Catalan Nationalism emerged earlier and stronger as a bourgeoise, underground urban movement, against an Absolutist and backwards Spain that had restored the Catalan institutions, but greatly favoured the local nobility and alienated the interests of the urban middle classes. Fairly liberal and staunchly capitalist. Capital: Barcelona.

-Aran Valley: Claimed by Catalonia but de facto independent, with a strong localist feeling, decided to go their own way in the chaos that followed the Spanish civil war. A haven for smugglers and pirates. Capital: Vielha Mitg Aran.

-Benasque: Another rogue microstate that emerged from the effective absence of government in the area. Claimed by Carlist Spain but de facto independent. Capital: Benasque.

-Protectorate of Majorca: The Balearic Islands were governed by insular local juntas during the chaos of the early 1870's, until Catalonia offered patronage. Capital: Palma.

-Free State of Ibiza: This island refused to become a Catalan puppet and kept self-government in commonwealth with Formentera. Currently a pirate nest. Capital: Ibiza.

-United Cantons of Iberia: The southeastern peninsula was swept by a wave of proto-Anarchist, popular Federalism. A league of quasi-independent, revolutionary city-states. Capital: Cartagena.

-Hanseatic Republic of Cadiz: The first one to secede after the Carlist victory. The city, loyal to its Liberal spirit, literally broke ties with the peninsula, with her independence granted by the British Empire. After the chaos of the civil war, it seized most of the gulf of Cadiz with the help of local partisans. A self-styled merchant city-state. Capital: Cadiz.

-Agrarian Republic of Galicia: An odd religious state inspired by a local priest who combined Galician Nationalism, agrarian Socialism and theodemocratic Catholic principles, and gained wide support against the perceived abandonment and corruption of the Elizabethian Spain. Capital: Santiago de Compostela.

-Northern Anarchist Syndicate: An Anarcho-Syndicalist territory founded from the miners and dockworkers' uprisings of the 1910's in Leon, Asturias and Ferrol. The last ones to join the party. Capital: none (Oviedo, Gijón and Ferrol as the most influential cities).

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The Ninth Crusade 2
From my interrupted TL "The Ninth Crusade", where Francoist Spain joins WWII in the Allied side (note: NOT intended as Francoist apologism). This is possible because of increased Spanish involvement during the war (especially concerning trade of Tungsten supplies) led to increased pressure after the Laurel diplomatic incident in the Philippines, and because the "three wars theory" (the idea of Spain being neutral in the Western Front, pro-Axis in the Eastern Front, and pro-Allies in the Pacific Front) that the propaganda was spreading made it easy to pull it out. While Spain's intervention was limited to some presence the Pacific in the latter stages of the war, it had drastic consequences.

Open to the outside from the beginning, beneficiary of the Marshall Plan, expansionistic and able to skip much of the hardsips of the Postwar, Spain becomes a Cold War player and commands the Iberoamerican Treaty Organization of Santiago, or OTIS, a group of right-wing Anti-Communist forces that do the dirty job for the Western Bloc. This came with a manageable but crucial political price: Monarchy was restored (under Jaime de Borbón, the Deaf King, whose renounce to the throne was revoked), and Franco ruled under a strong presidential framework as the head of a virtually uncontested Movimiento Nacional, with most parties that had chosen the losing side of the Civil War banned. Spain's close ties to Pan-Arabism have prompted the West to play divide and conquer in the Middle East (TTL's Baghdad is a jewel redesigned by Lloyd Wright).

It's 1970. Ernesto "Che" Guevara has been killed by one of the own FARC units he commanded, after years lost in the depths of the Colombian jungle. Japan tests its second constitution in this year, and wonders when will the next coup come. A united India with a permanent seat in the UN tries its first atomic bomb. Women take sunbaths in the Spanish overcrowded beaches and resorts, while the youth go die abroad for a cause that becomes more vague everyday, and the scene isn't ruled by the Movement nor the Opus, but by the powerful Consorcios (not too disimilar to the mighty Korean Chaebols), business giants such as Barreiros Automotive, Santa Bárbara Industries, the Hispano-Suiza and the all-powerful Grupo March. The Opus Dei controls the public morality to the degree it can, but it is increasingly seen as an heretical offshoot of Catholicism by the Church. The Spain of 1970, beyond the image it projects, is an accident waiting to happen.
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The Not-So-Ascendant South
I know CSA victories in the ACW have been done to death, but I want to join the party.

In this scenario, the Confederate States of America went to war with the USA again in the 1890's, due to disputed territories where loyalty was divided, and they lost. By that time, the USA probably could have, at a great expense, reincorporated the whole of the CSA, but decided, as it was the general opinion at the time, that nothing of value was lost. Still, the CSA was severely punished, losing Tennessee, the Arizona territory, Oklahoma and Virginia (the CSA capital was moved from Richmond to Atlanta). Shortly thereafter, Texas seceded from the CSA and entered the first the American, later the German sphere of influence; Florida, Louisiana and a forcefully neutralized Arkansas would follow suit. The rump CSA that remained was left isolated and backwards, abolishing slavery as late as the 1920's and keeping racial segregation to this day, becoming increasingly authoritarian to keep the racial tensions from imploding, to the point that nowadays the Federal government is appointed by a military junta. Texas has been considerably more succesful, if worringly oligarchical. The USA is still one of the main superpowers, though global power is more evenly distributed ITTL. It was from the USA that came and spread the Progressive movement, a mix of social democratic ideals and populistic Regenerationism. Still, the presence of the CSA in the global stage sent the message that the expansion of Liberalism could be stopped and corrected, and pushed many nations towards rather Conservative, disenfranchising forms of democracy respect to OTL. As such, the ideological divide between democratic nations is much greater.

There was a WWI in which neither the USA nor the CSA took part and which ended with a maintenance of the statu quo. The main divergence in the world stage were the spread of Progressivism to France and Britain (and the geopolitical left-right divide between democratic nations), and a Communist revolution that started in Austria-Hungary after cracks in its Auth-Conservative regime formed, and which spread to Italy. It tried to turn the cluster of nations of the Balkans into the seed of a true international Socialist state, but the project stalled when Russia followed suit and decided to take a more ethnonationalist approach. For now, *Communism is doing much better than IOTL.

The Ottoman Empire still collapsed, if a bit later, after a series of Nationalist revolts led by the Arab population. A remarkable event was the emergence of a Conservative-inspired Syrian *Fascist pan-movement, leading to a Greater Syria that stands against her neighgours and that counts as one of the most repressive states in the world. A Syrian inspired pan-movement gained momentum in Persia -there it started as reactionary Monarchist thing, but it has mellowed out substantially and now comes closer to a constitutional empire-, that eventually went all Lebensraum on Central Asia and took an advantage of the messy conflicts that followed India's independence. Needless to say, Syria and the Iranians don't get along too well. China did much better, and Japan not nearly as good, but that allowed them to avoid their OTL mistakes and to keep a degree of power over East Asia.

This is, generally speaking,a world that enjoys greater welfare but comes as a bit more backwards than our own; a world where nuclear weapons are a relatively recent developement, but the fear of a nuclear holocaust is still very present.
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Nicene-less World
A map depicting alternate religions of the world, in a world in which the Nicene Council never took place, resulting in an early East-West schism between *Catholics and much more successful Arians.

Just two notes:

"Orthopraxy" here is a form of Protestant schism. It has some points in common with OTL Protestantism (the free interpretation of the Bible, the Solo Christo teaching), but in many ways it's the actual opposite of Protestantism: its creator saw in the New Testament continous references to accepting Christ meaning following the will of the Father, and through fragments as Matthew 7:21-23, he developed the main tenet of Orthopraxy: that salvation doesn't come by faith at all, but just by good works. Not to be confused with Pelagianism: Orthopraxy believes in the original sin, the impossibility of a sinless life and that salvation comes by divine grace. However, grace is attracted by the right actions, by following Christ's example, so even if being a Christian isn't neccesary, it helps a lot. It comes in many flavours, from the fairly liberal to the puritan, to the communitarian and primitivist, due to divisions concerning what "good works" are.

"Kennomichi Buddhism" is a "Buddhism of the Sword", that follows the teachings of a Japanese sage. It regards all other branches of buddhism as a sure path to Naraka and it is violently proselitist, resorting to "mercy killings". Needless to say, the other branches of Buddhism don't get along very well with them.
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