And why would it be different. Remember follow the money. CC wanted to make a fortune in far Eastern spices and he thought he could get a monopoly by going west instead of east. If he hadn’t done it, somebody else would have in a very short time after 1492 and history would be basically the same, only the names of the first here would have changed.
Columbus brought the word of Jesus Christ with him. To the pagan human sacrifice Indians of the new world, that was absolutely the single most important result of his exploration.
History would have been quite different if the Portuguese were the first. Not just language but their culture is/was different from Spain.
Yep, you couldn’t keep an entire TWO continents “secret” for very long as history has shown. The Spaniards came in the 1500s not that long after Columbus. Not to mention indigenous people who had been here for at least 10,000 years. It wouldn’t have taken much time before another European expedition would have attempted to take over everything they found. The only difference I could possibly fathom would be if Spain had dominated North America (above Mexico of course) instead of the English and French. And that seems unlikely.