Spain today is a deeply divided nation. It’s widely understood that those divisions are consequences of the tragedy that was the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s and the brutal 40-year dictatorship of Francisco Franco that followed. But it may surprise many to learn that Spain has always been a divided nation. Some would even argue that it’s never really been a nation at all, just a collection of nations that trace their roots to the handful of medieval kingdoms that participated in the Reconquista, the centuries-long project to “retake” the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslims who conquered almost all of it after its invasion in 711 AD. Understanding the Reconquista is key to understanding the Spain that would come to dominate Europe and build the world’s first truly global empire in the 1500s.

Whether or not the Reconquista was a true reconquest, or just another conquest in a long line of them, is all a matter of perspective. The Iberian Peninsula has been conquered multiple times over its history. The original bronze age inhabitants were displaced by the Celts beginning around 1,000 BC. Then came the Carthaginians, and later the Greeks. In the 200s BC the Romans would conquer and colonize the entire region, renaming it Hispania. When the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the 400s AD, the germanic Visigoths migrated there and made it their home, which it remained for 300 years until they were pushed out by the Muslim Moors. Successive caliphates would build a marvelous Islamic based civilization in Spain that lasted for nearly 800 years until the final Emirate of Granada was defeated in 1492 by those Christian kingdoms who by that time bore no resemblance or allegiance to the Visigoths that fled north all those centuries earlier. So who conquered or reconquered who?