How did the Reconquista Actually Happen?

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

The Catholic Kings were the original MVPs

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Members of my family fought under King Sancho VII of Navarre at the BATALLA DE LAS NAVAS DE TOLOSA in 1212.

This is why I'm grateful for my Asturian ancestors. Their cause eventually led to the rise of the Spanish Empire, which resulted in their 16th century descendants arriving in the New World at the port of Veracruz in 1540, where, over the next century, travelled up the Rio Grande to Santa Fe, then south to El Paso, and gradually spread throughout what would eventually become West Texas.

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

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.

A most impressive breakdown of the Reconquista, thanks for the amazing contribution. Just a few notes from a spanish native speaker: The kingdom is called Asturias, and the city or Córdoba is pronounced 'COrdoba, rather than cor'DOba.

Good video covering a very broad period of Iberian history. It's not easy to cover nearly a millennium of events in 12 minuets.

The Reconquista was essentially over after the 1212 Navas de Tolosa battle, took a little over 500 years to complete in reality. Then it lingered on for 2 and a half more centuries cause Castille and Leon allowed it to, since it was economically beneficial.

In maths 'X' is a placeholder for unknown. Because Spanish translators used it for the Arabic letter "ش/sheen"(for sh sound). Which was used in Arabic in place of "Shai"(thing/entity)

I wondered about the reconquest of Iberia... very good video!!!

Fantastic video keep it up you're doing amazing things