The ripping yarn of a treasure, a dead bishop, a broke pope, and the pirates who inadvertently paid for the walls of Avignon is truth stranger than fiction. Because all good stories involve pirates.
The Reconquista, or Christian reconquest of Iberia, took nearly 800 years. The fighting did not come without great attempts by Muslim powers across the strait trying to reestablish their presence in mainland Europe. The last gasp of that effort came in the 1330s, when the powerful Marinid sultanate of what is modern Morocco invaded in an attempt to reverse Christian gains and secure the perilous position of the Sultanate of Granada.