Hundreds of thousands of Tainos living on the island were enslaved to work in gold mines. As a consequence of disease, forced labor, famine, and mass killings, by 1508, only 60,000 were still alive. In 1501, the Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand I and Isabella, first granted permission to the colonists of the Caribbean to import African slaves, who began arriving to the island in 1503. The first enslaved blacks were purchased in Lisbon, Portugal. Some had been transported there from the West African Guinea coast, and others had been born and raised in Portugal or Spain. Southern Spain and Portugal were multiethnic and multiracial regions long before the "discovery" of the New World, and many Africans, free and enslaved, participated in the Iberian Peninsula's conquest and colonization of the Americas.