Conquest of Malaga Day

On August 18, 1487, in one of the bloodiest episodes, is when the city fell into the hands of the Catholic Monarchs, who only allowed twenty-five families to remain in Malaga, as Mudejars, in the enclosure of the Moorish quarter.

The conquest of the city of Malaga by the Catholic Monarchs in August 1487 was a bloody episode in the final effort to conquer the Nasrid kingdom. After a long siege cutting the entrances of water and provisions to the city, from May 5 to August 18, the powerful Castilian army formed by twelve thousand horsemen, twenty-five thousand infantrymen and eight thousand more soldiers of support, managed to take the city defended by fifteen thousand African gomeres and warriors from Malaga. The siege of the city was one of the longest of the Reconquest. It lasted six months and cut off the food supply. The Muslim Mālaqa fell on August 13, 1487 and the Catholic Monarchs entered the medina on August 19. The population was punished to slavery or death penalty, with the exception of twenty-five families who were able to remain in the Moorish enclosure, as Mudejars. The conquest of the city was a very hard and definitive blow to the Nasrid kingdom of Granada, which thus lost its main sea gate.