Family research · Hub · Phase 6 of the world atlas

Flags of Iberia

Two countries, one peninsula — and one of the strangest turns in European dynastic history: for sixty years, Spain and Portugal answered to the same king, then split apart again for good. Below, a real traced map shows the whole story, from the Umayyad conquest to today.

Spain and Portugal each get their own deep-dive flag lineage in a later pass. For now, drag the map's slider to see the peninsula's history at a glance — especially 1580 and 1640, where the borders do something they don't do anywhere else in this atlas.

The two lineages

own page → Spain Al-Andalus, the Reconquista, the Catholic Monarchs, the Iberian Union, empire, civil war, the republic today. own page → Portugal Independence in 1139, the Age of Discovery, sixty years under the Spanish crown, the Braganza restoration, the republic today.

Thirteen centuries, one map

A real, traced map — actual coastlines, not schematic shapes — split into three pieces so the Reconquista frontier is visible: Portugal in the west, the Christian-then-united crown of Castile (and later Spain) across the center and north, and the Emirate of Granada holding the south until 1492. Drag the slider or press play.

Borders here are data, not decoration. A line between two regions only draws solid when they were actually governed separately. In 750 almost the whole peninsula is one Umayyad realm and every line dissolves; by 1150 three separate powers hold the ground and every line is solid. Watch 1492, when Granada is absorbed and its border with the rest of Spain dissolves for good — and especially 1580, when Portugal's own border dissolves too, as Philip II of Spain inherits the Portuguese throne and, for sixty years, one king rules the entire peninsula. In 1640 that line snaps back solid as Portugal breaks away again.

750

Al-Andalus dominant

Real traced coastline (simplified from Spain and Portugal's actual national boundaries). The Canary Islands and Balearic Islands are omitted from the traced shape, following this atlas's established practice for offshore territories — noted here rather than drawn. The Granada region's boundary is a stylized approximation of the historical Nasrid Emirate's extent, since no single authoritative medieval survey of it survives. France is now shown faint and unlabeled-by-color, for orientation only, across the Pyrenees to the northeast — it isn't tracked region-by-region on this map, but showing its real outline keeps the peninsula reading as a real place on a real coastline rather than an island.

Try: drag from 750 to 1150 and watch a single dissolved Al-Andalus block split into three solid-bordered powers as the Reconquista gets underway. Then jump to 1492 and watch the Granada border disappear as the Emirate falls — followed immediately by 1580, where the Portugal border disappears too and the whole peninsula becomes one color for the only time since the eighth century. At 1640 watch that same line snap back solid within a single slider-step, the fastest change on the whole map.

The same story, as a timeline

Maps are bad at showing when; timelines are bad at showing where. This uses real transition years instead of the nine arbitrary snapshots above — one horizontal band per region, colored the same way as the map, so the 1580–1640 Iberian Union shows up as a single shared color-block across both the Portugal and Castile/Spain rows.

The same story, nine frames — only the change lights up

Every region keeps its true color, but anything unchanged from the previous frame fades to low opacity; only the region(s) that actually changed hands stay bold with a solid outline. A caption under each frame spells out exactly what flipped.

About this atlas

This started as a family history project: tracing the flags that flew over the lands our ancestors came from, close enough to paint accurately — correct colors, correct proportions, correct dates. Iberia joins the atlas as its own hub because the Spain–Portugal relationship has a genuine, well-documented merge-and-split event at its center: the 1580–1640 Iberian Union, a rare case in this project of two entire modern countries sharing one crown and then un-sharing it.

Every country page carries its own timeline of flags with paint-ready color specs and a per-era location map. Colors are close historical approximations; pre-heraldic and early medieval swatches especially are informed reconstructions, not official specifications, and are labeled as such throughout. The map above simplifies thirteen centuries of messy, overlapping, disputed control into nine snapshots and three regions — useful for orientation, not a substitute for the detail each country's own page will carry.

More of the atlas

This hub is one region in a larger set. See the other phases here:

Flags Atlas indexSearch every country and hub Habsburg Lands hubSeven countries, four centuries German Lands hubGermany's own east-west split