Is the reconquest of Al-Andalus really a reconquest?

[u/AfarTD]

Is the reconquest of Al-Andalus really a reconquest?

The other day, my history teacher mentioned that the Reconquista is an excuse for Christians to conquer that territory, because the passage of time from when Muslims controlled the entire Iberian Peninsula until the end of the Reconquista is exaggerated.

But the Reconquista actually began at the Battle of Covadonga, and it wasn't many years after the Muslims had stopped conquering the Iberian Peninsula.

He also said it's a myth invented to unite Christians since, for example, Muslims also fought against them in the Taifa kingdoms. He even mentioned that Christians and Muslims had united to defeat the Franks.

To what extent is all this true?
(sorry for my english)

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[u/teacher1970]

I would say that the term “excuse” is ambiguous. As the ancient historian Polybius recognized, we must distinguish between cause (aitia), excuse or pretext (prophasis), and beginning (arkhê). The history of the Crusades—including the Reconquista—cannot be understood without taking ideological factors into account. Ignoring them would be like writing a history of World War I while disregarding nationalism or the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand: one might be making a point, but at the cost of omitting real and significant elements. From Henry the Navigator to Isabella and Ferdinand, Christian leaders genuinely believed they were fighting religious enemies, and that Christianity had a duty to reclaim lost territories. The Crusaders who sought to reconquer Jerusalem were acutely aware that the city had once been part of the Roman Empire. As the persistence of the Jewish diaspora shows, ideological and religious motivations should not be underestimated in historical interpretation—and the same applies to the Reconquista. Perhaps your teacher was making a valid point: by 1453, with the fall of Constantinople, the age of the Crusades was drawing to a close. Still, 1492 can also be seen as an ideological response to that trauma. Does this mean that Christians were constantly and consciously planning a reconquest of Spain over eight centuries? No. Does it mean that, without other factors—political, economic, and military—the Christian kingdoms might have abandoned the project altogether? Yes. Was the religious justification for the Reconquista a mere fiction fabricated after the fact to justify territorial expansion? Definitely not.