Marx wrote about commodity fetishism. Perhaps the ultimate version is a belief gold is innately valuable. It has valuable properties, but almost its sole function is to be rare and desirable. That we now use gold for electronics in some ways undermines its rei-ification as the personification of value.

Spain fucked up. They mistook the gold for something more valuable than Labor. The Merino sheep of Spain were a better bet, in the long term.

The Spanish gold disappeared into economies with a better sense of what value is.