ABSTRACT
Martín F. Ríos Saloma begins this volume by a careful interrogation of the accuracy and utility, as well as the historiographical status, of the category of Reconquest. The term meant little to contemporaries and was an early-modern construction. In its subsequent development Reconquest came to contain multiple meanings and has had political ascriptions applied to it, which continues into the present. It was the nineteenth century where this process really took off. This appropriation and re-framing of Reconquest was closely connected to the project of Spanish national unity. Close historical reading of the processes that later came to be termed Reconquest best enables us to understand the process. We find a combination of elements, from invented traditions to historiographical manipulation, in the crafting of these national narratives. Though we are perhaps stuck with the term Reconquest, in spite of its limitations, more precise usage can still give the term some relevance.
