What if Columbus had been correct that nothing but ocean stood between Europe and Asia?

What if there were no Americas and Columbus had reached Asia, like Magellan did 3 decades later? (Leaving aside the obvious question of whether or not his tiny fleet was actually prepared to cross so vast an amount of ocean - let us solve that issue by a smaller Earth for sake of discussion.) Would Spain have tried immediately to carve out an empire in the East Indies? Would they have succeeded? How would history have gone differently without North and South America? Without North America to colonize and fight over, would France and Britain ever have developed into great powers to rival Spain? Conversely, without the resources (particularly precious metals and emeralds) of the New World, would Spain ever have developed into the premier power of Europe during the 16th Century? Would an Asian power (such as Yuan China) eventually have flipped the script and colonized Europe?