The term La Convivencia ("the Coexistence"), of which Toledo has long been a center, is used to describe the situation in Spanish history from about 711 to 1492—concurrent with the Reconquista ("Reconquest")—when Jews, Muslims, and Catholics in Spain live in relative peace together within the different kingdoms (during the same time, however, the Christian push to the south into Moorish land is ongoing).

The phase often refers to the interplay of cultural ideas between the three groups, and ideas of religious tolerance.

Henry II of Castile and Leon, better known as Henry of Trastámara before his coronation, is the first nobleman to employ anti-Jewish sentiment as a political tool in Spain.

This leads to an end to the convivencia, and a period of riots and pogroms, and can be seen as sowing the seeds of the persecution of the Jews by the Spanish Inquisition, which is to begin a hundred years later.

The widowed John of Gaunt, now Duke of Lancaster, had married Constance, the elder daughter and heiress of his murdered ally King Peter I of Castile, in 1371, then claimed the Castilian crown occupied by the slain monarch’s fratricidal half-brother, Henry II.