Over the next few decades, successive Portuguese kings would embark on a near-constant campaign southwards to repel the Muslims. In 1179, after several decades of de facto independence, the acknowledgement of the Afonso I as the King of Portugal by Pope Alexander III marked the effective beginning of an independent Portuguese Kingdom in the eyes of Christian Europe. Count Afonso of Portugal secured its effective independence in 1139 when he was proclaimed as its first king following the Battle of Ourique, formally breaking away from the suzerainty of the Kingdom of León. Carved out of the Umayyad Emirate of Córdoba by the Kingdom of Asturas in 868 as a vassal county, it would spend the next two and a half centuries under the rule of various kingdoms that ultimately had their power base in the Cantabrian Mountains. Portugal, like Spain, was ultimately born out of the Reconquista.
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