How might the Reconquista have affected Spain's economic and cultural life

In 1491, no European knew that North and South America existed. By 1550, Spain - a small kingdom that had not even existed a century earlier - controlled the better part of two continents and had become the most powerful nation in Europe. In half a century of brave exploration and brutal conquest, both Europe and America were changed forever.

The Reconquista[a] (Spanish and Portuguese for the "reconquest") is the period of history of the Iberian Peninsula spanning approximately 770 years between the Islamic conquest of Hispania in 710 and the fall of the last Islamic state in Iberia at Granada to the expanding Christian kingdoms in 1492. The Reconquista ended immediately before the European re-discovery of the Americas-the "New World"-which ushered in the era of the Portuguese and Spanish colonial empires.

Historians traditionally mark the beginning of the Reconquista with the Battle of Covadonga (718 or 722), the first victory by Christian military forces since the 710 Islamic conquest of Iberia by the Umayyad Caliphate. During the Battle of Covadonga, a small Christian army led by the nobleman Pelagius defeated the caliphate's army in the mountains of northern Iberia and established the independent Christian Kingdom of Asturias.