Alfonso VIII of Castile is one of the best-known kings of the so-called “Spanish Reconquest,” or, rather, the Iberian Middle Ages. However, as Teófilo Ruiz points out in his introduction to this volume, the seminal work of Julio González—El Reino de Castilla en la época de Alfonso VIII (Madrid, 1960)—on his reign has overshadowed any other research on this crucial period in the past half century. Not until the 2010s did Spanish scholars awaken to new interpretations. In Spanish historiography, the publication of a monumental work (including archival documents) often results in the subject being dropped for a long time instead of being activated with more partial studies. Even a re-assessment of Alfonso VIII’s battles of Alarcos and Las Navas de Tolosa and his expansion in the Ebro Valley arrived only after 1990 (2, 8).
A previous collection of essays in Spanish focused on an update of political history,...