Completion of the Reconquista — Fall of Granada
On 2 January 1492, Muhammad XII (Boabdil), the last Nasrid sultan of Granada, surrendered the keys of the Alhambra palace to Ferdinand and Isabella, completing the Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula that had begun in the eighth century. The fall of Granada ended the last Muslim kingdom in Western Europe. The same year brought two other epochal events: in March, Ferdinand and Isabella issued the Alhambra Decree expelling all Jews from Spain (approximately 80,000–200,000 people), and in August, Christopher Columbus departed on his first transatlantic voyage with royal sponsorship. The proximity of these events in 1492 reflects the intense religious nationalism of the Catholic Monarchs' project—a unified, purified Catholic Spain was to become the platform for global Christian expansion. The expulsion of the Jews, however, was an economic catastrophe, removing skilled artisans, merchants, and physicians at the moment Spain was acquiring an empire that would require exactly those skills.
- Year: 1492 CE
- Category: Military
