[shsbdksn]

That's a very strange way to present Spanish history.

Spain was unified province of Rome, and then its own country under the Visigoths for a total of 800 years. That's 800 years of unified governance. Spain had a common language (vulgate) and religion (various sects of christianity).

We have the pre-Islamic negotiations on issues of Faith. The Visigoths were Arians but slowly became Catholics. We have the history of countless councils.

Spain wasn't, but for some savages, empty land for the muslim armies to take. And it's ridiculous to think it could have been - where did the people to fight the most powerful army of the day come from? Asturias is just not that big.

[juunpp]

Hispania constituted several Roman provinces. I'm not sure what you mean by "unified". Unified legally under the Roman empire, sure, but not as a nation or even culturally. (By that token, we could say "Spain" was unified under the Arabs, too.) It is not until the marriage of the Catholic monarchs that historians put the start of Spain as a unified nation. So "reconquista" doesn't add up to reality; "unification" or "birth" would be a better term.

I think your other points are fine, thanks for adding.

> Spain wasn't, but for some savages, empty land for the muslim armies to take.

It was fairly a walk in the park for them; took only a decade to get the peninsula under control and venture into France, until they lost their first battle there. That, and the Basque country; nobody can conquer the Basque country, which is why they speak a non-romance language to this day, among other things.

[felipeerias]

The provinces of the Iberian Peninsula, as well as the Balearic Islands and the coast south of the strait of Gibraltar, formed the Diocese of Hispania until the Germanic invasions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocese_of_Hispania

[chipdart]

> formed the Diocese of Hispania

That was an administrative region that existed only for slightly over a century. The caliphate of Cordoba existed for longer than that.

[shsbdksn]

And Christian Spain hass run longer than the Caliphate.

[anon291]

There was no such thing as nations in the way we think about them today back then.

[shsbdksn]

Spain was always a confederacy of tribes! Even today!

The very concert of fueros formalizes this starting 1000 years ago. Those fueros still constitute the basis of the Spanish Constitution today (i.e. autonomous regions).

That the Spanish central state never felt the need to genocide Spain's constituent tribes like Paris did in France should be considered a good thing! Most Euskera speakers are on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees!

EDIT: the Asturians, from whom the seed of the reconquista came from, are ethnic celts and play a local variation of bag pipes.

[pvaldes]

Yup, in the North West of Spain live the "Spaniard Irish", but not everybody there is blond. Eva Longoria or Gloria Stephan descend from Asturian people and are a better example representative of Asturias women. Nobody in USA would call this women celts.

[chipdart]

> Spain wasn't, but for some savages, empty land for the muslim armies to take.

I think you're missing the point.

OP's point was that "Spain did not exist as a nation anytime prior to that." The truth of the matter is that it didn't, and to make matters worse even today Spain itself is comprised of regions with distinct national identities which reject the idea of being a part of the castilian-based nation.