Fall of Muslim rule and unification

The long period of expansion of Spain's Christian kingdoms, beginning in 722 with the Muslim defeat in the Battle of Covadonga and the creation of the Christian Kingdom of Asturias, only eleven years after the Moorish invasion, is called the Reconquista. As early as 739 Muslim forces were driven out of Galicia, which was to host one of medieval Christianity's holiest sites, Santiago de Compostella. Areas in the north became a base for the Christians. The breakup up of Al-Andalus into the competing Taifa kingdoms helped the consolidating Christian kingdoms. The 1085 conquest of the central city of Toledo largely completed the reconquest of the northern half of Spain. As the Reconquista advanced south the Muslim population either fled or was required to convert to Catholicism. Mosques and synagogues were converted into churches.

After a revival of Moorish fortunes in the 12th century the great Moorish strongholds in the south fell to Christian Spain in the 13th century - Córdoba in 1236 and Seville in 1248. This soon left only the small Muslim enclave of Granada as a tributary state in the south. It came to an end in 1492 when Isabella and Ferdinand captured Granada. The Treaty of Granada[3] guaranteed religious tolerance toward Muslims while Spain's Jewish population of over 200,000 people was expelled that year. At Ferdinand's urging the Spanish Inquisition had been established in 1478. With a history of being invaded by three Islamic empires (Ummayad, Almoravid and Almohad), and a fourth attempt (Marinids), it was feared that local Muslims were a danger. Aragonese labourers were angered by landlords' use of Moorish workers to undercut them. A 1499 Muslim uprising, triggered by forced conversions, was crushed and was followed by the first of the expulsions of Muslims, in 1502. The year 1492 was also marked by the discovery of the New World. Isabella I funded the voyages of Christopher Columbus. Ferdinand II and Isabella I, as exemplars of the Renaissance New Monarchs, consolidated the reform of their respective economies that had been pursued by their predecessors and enforced reforms that weakened the position of the great magnates against the new centralized crowns. In their contests with the French army in the Italian Wars, Spanish forces under Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba eventually achieved success, against the French knights, thereby revolutionizing warfare. The combined Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, vibrant and expansive, emerged as a European great power.

With the union of Castile and Aragón in 1479 by Isabella I and Frerdinand II and the subsequent conquest of Granada in 1492 and Navarre in 1512, the word Spain (España, in Spanish - derived from the ancient "Hispania") began being used only to refer to the new united kingdoms (they kept their separate laws and institutions) and not to the whole of Hispania.