Reconquista: Portuguese and Castilian forces halt a Muslim invasion at the Battle of Río Salado.

The Reconquista or the fall of al-Andalus was a series of military and cultural campaigns that European Christian kingdoms waged against Muslim-ruled al-Andalus, culminating in the reign of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain.

Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it shares the longest uninterrupted border in the European Union; to the south and the west is the North Atlantic Ocean; and to the west and southwest lie the Macaronesian archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira, which are the two autonomous regions of Portugal. Lisbon is the capital and largest city, followed by Porto, which is the only other metropolitan area.

The Crown of Castile was a medieval polity in the Iberian Peninsula that formed in 1230 as a result of the third and definitive union of the crowns and, some decades later, the parliaments of the kingdoms of Castile and León upon the accession of the then Castilian king, Ferdinand III, to the vacant Leonese throne. It continued to exist as a separate entity after the personal union in 1469 of the crowns of Castile and Aragon with the marriage of the Catholic Monarchs up to the promulgation of the Nueva Planta decrees by Philip V in 1716.

The Battle of Río Salado also known as the Battle of Tarifa was a battle between the armies of King Afonso IV of Portugal and King Alfonso XI of Castile against those of Sultan Abu al-Hasan 'Ali of the Marinids and Yusuf I of the Granada.