Battle of Covadonga The Battle of Covadonga was the first significant victory by a Christian military force in Iberia following the Muslim Moors ' conquest of that region in 711 . It was fought at Covadonga , most likely in the summer of 722 . It assured the independence of the Kingdom of Asturias and , in the longer term , the survival of a Christian stronghold in northern Iberia . It was from there that the return of Christian rule over the entire Iberian peninsula began , so that the battle is in retrospect regarded as the beginning of the " Reconquista " . According to texts written by Mozarabs in northern Iberia during the ninth century , noble Visigoths , in AD 718 elected a man named Pelagius ( 681 - 737 ) as their leader . Pelagius , a son of Favila , who had been a dignitary at the court of the Visigoth King Egica ( 687 - 700 ) , established his headquarters at Cangas de Onís , Asturias and incited an uprising against the Umayyad Muslims . From the beginning of the Muslim invasion of Iberia , refugees and combatants from the south of the peninsula had been moving north to avoid Islamic authority . Some had taken refuge in the remote mountains of Asturias in the northwestern part of the Iberian peninsula . There , from among the dispossessed of the south , Pelagius recruited his band of fighters . His first acts were to refuse to pay the Jizya ( tax on non - Muslims ) to the Muslims any longer and to assault the small Umayyad garrisons that had been stationed in the area . Eventually , he managed to expel a provincial governor named Munuza from Asturias . He held the territory against a number of attempts to re - establish Muslim control , and soon founded the Kingdom of Asturias , which became a Christian stronghold against further Muslim expansion . For the first few years , this rebellion posed no economic or strategic threat to the new masters of Iberia , whose seat of power had been established at Cordoba . Consequently , there was only a quite perfunctory reaction . Pelagius was not always able to keep the Muslims out of Asturias , but neither could they defeat him , and as soon as the Muslims left , he would always re - establish control . Islamic forces were focused on raiding Narbonne and Gaul , and there was a shortage of manpower for putting down an inconsequential , albeit irritating , insurrection in the mountains . Pelagius never attempted to force the issue , and it was a Umayyad defeat elsewhere that probably set the stage for the Battle of Covadonga . On July 9 , 721 , a Muslim force that had crossed the Pyrenees and invaded the Kingdom of the Franks was defeated by them in the Battle of Toulouse , in present - day France . This was the first serious setback in the Muslim campaign in southwestern Europe . Reluctant to return to Cordoba with such unalloyed bad news , the Ummayad wāli , Anbasa ibn Suhaym Al - Kalbi , decided that putting down the rebellion in Asturias on his way home would afford his troops an easy victory and raise their flagging morale . In 722 , forces commanded by the Umayyad commanders Al Qama and Munuza , accompanied by Bishop Oppas of Seville , brother of the former Visigothic King Witiza , were sent to Asturias . As Al Qama overran much of the region , Oppas attempted to broker the surrender of his fellow Christians , but he failed in the effort . Pelagius and his force retreated deep into the mountains of Asturias , eventually retiring into a narrow valley flanked by mountains , which was easily defensible due to the impossibility of launching a broad - fronted attack . Pelagius may have had as few as three hundred men with him . Al Qama eventually arrived at Covadonga , and sent forward an envoy to convince Pelagius to surrender . He refused , so Al Qama ordered his best troops into the valley to fight . The Asturians opened fire from the slopes of the mountains , and then , at the climactic moment , Pelagius personally led some of his soldiers out into the valley . They had been hiding in a cave , unseen by the Muslims . The Christian accounts of the battle claim that the slaughter among the Muslims was horrific , while Umayyad accounts describe it as a mere skirmish . Al Qama himself fell in the battle , and his soldiers fled from the battlefield . In the aftermath of Pelagius ' victory , the people of the conquered villages of Asturias now emerged with their weapons , and killed hundreds of Al Qama ' s fleeing troops . Munuza , learning of the defeat , organized another force , and gathered what was left of the survivors of Covadonga . At some later date , he confronted Pelagius and his now greatly augmented force , near the modern town of Proaza . Again Pelagius won , and Munuza was killed in the fighting . And although the Muslims in their own histories called Pelagius and his men " thirty Infidels left , what can they do " , they never again seriously challenged the independence of the Kingdom of Asturias . The battle is commemorated at the shrine of Our Lady of Covadonga .