Pelayo, with the Visigothic leaders who escaped Tarik, created the kingdom of Asturias in northwestern Spain, south of the Bay of Biscay. Pelayo's victory over the Moors at Covadonga (718?–725) marks, according to 13th-century clerical propagandists of royal and aristocratic elites, the start of the reconquista (reconquest), a sacred patriotic effort to wrest power from the Muslims and restore Christian rule in Spain. Asturias, a remote and barren land, did not interest the Muslims.
Miraculous discovery of the bones of St. James the Greater and erection of the first church of Santiago de Campostella, which became the center of the Spanish national cult and one of the most influential shrines in Europe.
Count Fernán González, count of Burgos (later, Castile), marked the rise of the counts of Burgos. By intrigue and alliance with the Muslims, he expanded his domain at the expense of Leon, and made the country of Castile autonomous and hereditary. His progress was arrested by Sancho the Fat of Leon (d. 966), who was in alliance with Abd ar-Rahman III.
