Reconquista Is the name given to the protracted struggle to recover Spain from the Muslims from the 8th to the 15th century. Those Visigoths who escaped the Islamic conquest of Spain in 711 AD established a number of small states in the Pyrennes and began a long, on again, off again was to recover the lost territories. By the mid-13th century, despite frequent long periods of inactivity, punctuated by wars among the Christian states, the Reconquista was effectively complete, save for the Muslim enclave of Granada, which was a vassal to the Kings of Leon and Castille and in turn fell in 1492.