The Reconquista is the long process by which the Christian kingdoms of the north conquered the lands of al-Andalus between the eighth and fifteenth centuries. The term was coined much later and presents the process as the recovery of a lost Visigothic Spain; historians today stress that it was slow and discontinuous, with long phases of peace, exchange and cross-cutting alliances between Christians and Muslims.
Beginnings in the north
According to tradition, in 722 the nobleman Pelayo defeated a Muslim force at Covadonga, in the mountains of Asturias, where a sanctuary still stands. The kingdom of Asturias was born, and with the discovery of the supposed tomb of the apostle James at Santiago in the ninth century it found a powerful symbol. The kingdom moved its capital to León and expanded to the Duero river. In the Pyrenees the kingdom of Navarre, Aragon and the Catalan counties, originally tied to the Franks, took shape; from a castle-filled frontier county of León emerged Castile, which became a kingdom in 1035.
Toledo and El Cid
The break-up of the caliphate into taifa kingdoms after 1031 allowed the Christians to impose tributes and advance. In 1085 Alfonso VI of León and Castile took Toledo, the old Visigothic capital. In the same years the Castilian knight Rodrigo Díaz, El Cid, conquered Valencia, which he held until his death. In 1118 Alfonso I of Aragon took Zaragoza. In 1137 the dynastic union of Aragon and the county of Barcelona created the Crown of Aragon.
The great conquests of the thirteenth century
The arrival of the Almoravids and Almohads slowed the advance, but in 1212 a coalition of Castile, Aragon and Navarre defeated the Almohads at Las Navas de Tolosa. Decades of very rapid conquest followed: Ferdinand III of Castile, definitively united with León in 1230, took Córdoba (1236), Jaén (1246) and Seville (1248); James I of Aragon conquered Majorca (1229) and Valencia (1238). Portugal completed its share with the Algarve in 1249. From then on only the Nasrid kingdom of Granada remained in Muslim hands.
Resettling the land
Conquest also meant resettlement: kings granted land and privileges (fueros) to settlers from the north, to the military orders of Santiago, Calatrava and Alcántara, to the nobility and the Church. In some areas, such as the Ebro valley and Valencia, large subject Muslim communities, the mudéjares, remained for a long time and gave their name to an artistic style (see Mudéjar art). The Reconquista also explains Spain's linguistic geography: Castilian, Catalan and Galician moved south with the conquerors (see the Spanish language).
The fall of Granada
After a century and a half of relative stability, the Catholic Monarchs launched the war of Granada in 1482. Town by town, from Alhama to Ronda, from Málaga to Baza, the kingdom was reduced to its capital, which surrendered on 2 January 1492. The terms guaranteed Muslims freedom of worship, but were soon broken: in 1502 Castile imposed conversion or exile. 1492 is remembered as the end of the Reconquista and the beginning of modern Spain (see the history of Spain).