Territorial expansion was deeply embedded in Portuguese history and identity. The very fact of the kingdom’s existence was down to the efforts of generations of crusaders, who fought in the Reconquista to carve out their long, thin state along the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula, grinding along year after year, in their wars against the Almoravids, Almohads, and taifa kings of al-Andalus. This was a long, hard process. Lisbon was taken from Islamic hands during the Second Crusade in 1147. It took another hundred years to establish the kingdom proper and extend its borders all the way
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