Reina Regente was the first cruiser built of her class. She was laid down on 20 June 1886 and launched on 24 February 1887 at the J&G Thomson shipyard in Govan, United Kingdom. She was completed on 1 January 1888 and named Reina Regente after Maria Christina, queen of Spain, and queen regent during the minority of her son, Alfonso XIII. The cruiser was part of the Spanish Navy from 1888 until her loss in 1895.

Her sister ships were with sister ships Alfonso XIII and Lepanto. The ship was 97.3 metres (319 ft 3 in) long, with a beam of 15.4 metres (50 ft 6 in) and a draught of 8.92 metres (29 ft 3 in). The ship was assessed at 4,725 tons. She had 2 triple expansion engines driving a single screw propeller and 4 cylindrical boilers. The engine was rated at 11.500 nhp.

On 10 March 1895, Reina Regente departed Tangier in Morocco for the port of Cádiz, Spain, with a crew of 420 on board under the command of Captain Francisco Sanz de Andino. Sanz de Andino ordered the unscheduled voyage because he wanted to witness the launching of the modern armored cruiser Carlos V in Cádiz the following day. As Reina Regente passed through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Gulf of Cádiz a severe storm struck the area and she went down with all hands lost. In the following days a search was undertaken in the hope of finding the ship somewhere sheltered in an African port. However, wreckage from the cruiser started to wash up on the beaches of Tarifa and Algeciras.

The cruiser had disappeared and had probably sunk somewhere in the Gulf of Cádiz with the loss of her entire crew. The current location of the ship is still unknown. This incident remains one of the deadliest shipwrecks of the Spanish Navy.^[1]