In the spanish colonial caste system, peninsulares were:
a. descendants of the indigenous peoples of the americas.
b. european colonists born in spain.
c. people of spanish descent born in the new world.
d. people of african descent brought to the new world by way of the atlantic slave trade.

B.European colonists born in Spain.

Explanation:

Peninsular refers to a peninsula, particularly the inhabitant of an area or town located in it. Its use in the context of common speech and the Spanish-speaking bibliography, both literary and historiographic, peninsular is the name used to designate the natives of the Iberian Peninsula, as opposed to the local Spanish overseas territories at the time of the Spanish empire .

In the historical past it was used fundamentally in Spanish America, where the concept was socially and terminologically opposed to the Creoles, that is, the Spanish-born Spaniards of Spanish parents, who shared with the peninsulares that trait of caste in the racially stratified society of the Spanish viceregal America. The process of Independence of Hispanic America was to a large extent an expression of creole / peninsular opposition.

uncle sam would be tossing and turning in his grave : *)