The Reconquista ("reconquest") is a period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula, spanning approximately 770 years between the initial stage of the Islamic conquest in the 710s and the fall of Granada, the last Islamic state on the peninsula, to expanding Christian kingdoms in 1492. The Reconquista ended immediately before the European discovery of the Americas—the "New World"—which ushered in the era of the Portuguese and Spanish colonial empires.