Answer:
Not enough information for the answer you might need, but just in case, it wasn't the Spaniards who were asking about gold, it was Columbus. Once he arrived in the Americas in the Bahamas in 1492, where he met a tribe of natives who directed him up East, telling him about the gold that lied up there.
As for the Spaniards, I resent saying they didn't search for gold in the Americas. 27 years later, Cortes and his army of a tleast 500 hundred men found the Aztec Empire in 1519. And because of the lack of firearms with the Aztecs, Cortes and his army were able to conquer the Empire. He did solmly do it for the riches, but also for Spain to claim it as a colony titled Nuevo España, New Spain. Further information, Cortes was known in history a greedy and sadistic man, for how insensitive and unempathetic he was towards the concepts of death and destruction.