In 587, the Gothic king Recaredo allied himself with the Trinitarians for political convenience and, in his own name and in the name of all his people, abjured the Arianism that had been practiced by the previous Gothic monarchs. The Arian cult was forbidden and brutal persecutions began against its followers and also against the Jews, who until then had practiced their religion freely. The Arians of the peninsula and the south of France revolted and had to endure during the following century robberies, rapes, murders and reduction to slavery, perpetrated by elements of the Gothic oligarchy and the clergy themselves.

The tension eased when the Gothic king Vitiza ascended the throne in 702 and began to undo the wrongs of his predecessors: he declared an amnesty against the persecuted and restored their property; he stopped the hostile measures against the Jews and convened the XVIII Council of Toledo, whose minutes, suspiciously, have been lost. The bulk of historians believe that they were destroyed because they were contrary to orthodox Roman Christianity. At the death of Vitiza, around 709, everything changed. The nobility and the bishops prevented his son Achila, who was younger, from occupying the throne, and elected in his place the one that history has known as Don Rodrigo, a military leader who was close to their interests. A civil war then broke out between his supporters, probably followers of established Christianity, and those who supported the successors of Vitiza, more committed to Unitarian or Arian beliefs, who saw in Don Rodrigo a usurper of the Visigothic throne.

In command of Betica was Rechesindo, the former tutor of Vitiza’s son. Rodrigo killed him in a skirmish and entered Seville without opposition. Then the supporters of Vitiza’s lineage, the weakened Unitarians, asked for help from their co-religionist Taric, governor of the Visigothic province of Tingitana (today’s Tangier) in northern Morocco, who had been appointed by Vitiza and with whose reign he had close trade relations. Taric was probably of Gothic race, as indicated by the syllable “ic”, son in the Germanic language. One of the military chiefs was Yulian, of Roman origin, whom the legend of the invasion turned into the traitor Count Don Julian. Taric crossed the strait with warriors of various ethnicities, integrated into the unitary cause, among whom the Berbers abounded. The presence of these troops did not provoke a special reaction among the native population, since the request for help from foreign forces was a very common practice in Hispania. The Jews, who had been fiercely persecuted by the Gothic monarchs after they abandoned the Arian faith, welcomed the newcomers.

Experts stress that only a state can organize a military invasion. And so there is no Arabian empire, but tribes and small warlords often at odds with each other and lacking government, administration and army.

According to the historian Ignacio Olagüe, “in the Latin and Berber chronicles the Goths appear as a separate group that fought against an enemy that was neither Spanish, nor Christian, nor heretic, but anonymous; that is to say, Saracen”. What could not be said, or what the chronicler ignored, was that the Goths fought against the mass of the people, contrary to the dominant oligarchy.

The myth of the Muslim invasion: Part 1, The Martyrdom of Priscillian

The mythe of the muslim invasion, part 3: Solomon’s Table

The mythe of the muslim invasion, part4: The emir with blue eyes