How did the Reconquista Actually Happen?

The Reconquista. One of the greatest and most deserved comebacks in human history.

This is the most underrated underdog comeback of feudal history and never got a movie done.

Random fun fact: by the later stages of reconquista, the christian kings started to REALLY get into chess and other board games like backgammon and after the fall of Granada, under the Catholic Monarchy, chess was reinvented to add the Queen as the most powerful piece, letting bishops move as far as they wanted, and started using the game for dating

What's more impressive than the reconquista itself is the formation of the maritime Iberian civilizations that followed shortly after the centuries of reconquests

Muslim Granada was valuable economically to the Iberian Christian kingdoms so they let it survive, until the Ottoman conquest of the Eastern Roman Empire tipped the power balance in the Mediterranean in favor of the Muslims. The Iberian Christians were afraid of losing their gains to the Muslims reinvigorated by the Ottomans, so they decided to remove the chance that Muslim Granada would become a toehold on the peninsula for the Ottomans. The 200 years of Granada's survival after the fall of Seville ended under this geopolitical circumstance, which caused the Iberian Christian monarchs to become "more religious" as the narrative says. The final conquest of Granada proved to be strategically necessary for the Iberian Christians since the Ottomans soon after became a big naval power and took over most of muslim North Africa, took Greek and Adriatic islands from the Venetians, Rhodes from the Knights, and laid siege to Malta at the doorsteps of Italy.

Spanish empire took some kind of revenge for us greeks. Love spain from greece

To all my Spanish brothers, a big hug from Portugal. Sometimes i wonder what our Global Empire would have been if we were united as one since the Reconquista.

You crucially forgot about Republacion (repopulation). One of the reasons why the Reconquest lasted so long was that in the early part the Christians cleansed reconquered areas and repopulated them with their own people. This process takes generations.

We will have to do it again if this political nonsense continues.

The Catholic Kings were the original MVPs

Asturias is pronounced just like its written. Its Asturia-S. The S is not silent, as it is a Spanish name.

i appreciate your intellectual honesty. often times when discussing the Reconquista, people have a tendency to gloss over the formation of Portugal, treating it as a side note

Just to add that 1415 marked the conquest of Ceuta harbour city in Africa. The Portuguese new dynasty considered the possibility of trying to conquer Granada, but changed its mind because it would bring some problems with Castille. This year marked the beginning of the Age of Discovery

There are a few thing bad in this video. -The "infamous" Spanish inquisition started in 1492, after the reconquista was finished. It's estimated there were 1000 executions (in the whole empire 31M pop, not just Spain) between 1530–1630 and 250 between 1630 and 1730. While in Germany (with less population 16M pop, and in a short period) executed 2500. All of this AFTER the reconquista -Catalonia was not a Kingdom, they not were even united at all, they were a group of independent counties. -Asturias was not an independent or different Kingdom, it's the succesor of the Visigoth Kingdom, the ones who exile from the rest of the peninsula seek shelter there -The kingdom of Portugal appears from the Kingdom of Galicia (that later was annexed by Leon), not from Leon -The Catholic Kings invaded Granada cause the new Emir refuse to keep the payments not just for "intolerance". Great animations and good resume

giving your people a common enemy is a crucial step in getting them unified

As a Coptic Christian from Egypt, I really hope that our country can be retaken like the Spanish did. I congratulate the Spanish for their remarkable reconquest of their rightful land

"infamous Spanish Inquisition". Not even 1 min into the video and there has to be a reference of the Spanish Black legend

WE KICKED EM BACK!!!! LETS GOOO!!!

The reconquista was one of the most important events in history! Can you imagine a world without the Iberian people and the age of exploration?

Catalonia was a region including several lordships and counties, not a kingdom. After the decay of the Frankish Carolingian rule in the Hispanic March, the County of Barcelona was the preeminent power in the region. The dynastic union resulting from the marriage of the Princess of Aragon and the Count of Barcelona, Ramon Berenguer IV, resulted into the Crown of Aragon. Later it included the kingdoms of Valencia and Majorca, as well as the italian kingdoms of Naples, Sicily and Sardinia until 1714.