We can consider, quite rightly, that this book, while being the collective work of more than 70 authors, is overall the posthumous work of Pedro Lains, who sadly passed away on 16 May 2021. Pedro always expressed concern about southern Europe not being sufficiently represented in the analyses of the continent’s economic past. Therefore, he believed that the countries of the Iberian Peninsula shared sufficient common features so as to deserve a monograph, published in English, to address their trajectory and facilitate their integration in European economic history.

His efforts with this book were titanic. He designed the structure of a text that had to span from the Early Middle Ages to the present day. The perspective that he sought was not to analyse the Iberian territories separately but to integrate them in a common vision.

The period between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries was a phase of profound political and economic mutation for the Iberian Peninsula, in the context of which the confluence of expansionist processes dictated the emergence and reconfiguration of different political maps. This chapter seeks to trace the general evolution of the different political models that took shape in the Iberian Peninsula throughout this period, as well as to characterize the action of the institutions responsible for defining the foundations of an economic policy. To this end, the chapter is divided into two parts. The first one focuses on the evolution of the space controlled by the Muslims, looking at transversal aspects of economic policy and the implications deriving from the development of the territory. The second part focuses on the study of Christian institutions, on the construction of the Iberian kingdoms, and highlights the role of the monarchies and political institutions in the establishment of the economy and on the transition from a war-based economy to an economy where the market and trade assume a growing importance.