WI: Portugal + Castile = Spain?

AS the title says, what if Portugal and Castile merged to form Spain instead of Aragon and Castile?

Yes the same time period.

Discuss...
 
It's very likely that almost all of the New World would become Spain's, with those extra ports and the absence of Portugal.
 
Isabella marring a Portuguese monarch rather then an Aragonese one?

That seems like rather late of a POD, but the consequences could be interesting. The question is why Portugal when Aragon is larger and more influential at the time Isabel was looking to marry?
 
Reverse the Battle of Aljubarrota into a crushing defeat that destroys Aviz.

Also pointing out that IIRC Henry the Impotent tried to get Isabel married off to the Portuguese (Afonso V) but she managed to hold him off long enough to get Fernando.
 
Both John II and Henry IV had Portuguese consorts, so did eventually Joan the -ahem- legal heir of Henry IV ahead of Isabella. At the outbreak of the war of Castilian succession in 1474 Joan controlled most of Andalusia, Extremadura, New Castile and Galicia and she had Portuguese and later French support.

So take out would-be Ferdinand II's expertise as a military commander and Isabella will be doomed to exile, if not outright kicked to an Aragonese convent since the Papal bulla that aproved their marriage in 1469 was a fake.

Net result: Castile and Portugal are de facto united for a few years. Afonso V was probably too old to make heir by then, but the trend will continue with Joan re-marrying into the Avis if there is one available.
 
Both John II and Henry IV had Portuguese consorts, so did eventually Joan the -ahem- legal heir of Henry IV ahead of Isabella. At the outbreak of the war of Castilian succession in 1474 Joan controlled most of Andalusia, Extremadura, New Castile and Galicia and she had Portuguese and later French support.

So take out would-be Ferdinand II's expertise as a military commander and Isabella will be doomed to exile, if not outright kicked to an Aragonese convent since the Papal bulla that aproved their marriage in 1469 was a fake.

Net result: Castile and Portugal are de facto united for a few years. Afonso V was probably too old to make heir by then, but the trend will continue with Joan re-marrying into the Avis if there is one available.
Isabella, the mother of Miguel de la Paz was already born on this POD.
 
It's very likely that almost all of the New World would become Spain's, with those extra ports and the absence of Portugal.
Nope- Spain only took the Americas because they wanted to bypass the Portuguese monopoly on trade with the East. Aragon's geographic position makes it unlikely it will cross the Atlantic and discover the New World, so the Dutch/French/British are probably the first to discover it instead. Of course I'm ignoring the Basque awareness of Atlantic Canada and possible Portuguese awareness of Eastern Brazil... so first colonization attempts would be a better phrase.
 
Nope- Spain only took the Americas because they wanted to bypass the Portuguese monopoly on trade with the East. Aragon's geographic position makes it unlikely it will cross the Atlantic and discover the New World, so the Dutch/French/British are probably the first to discover it instead. Of course I'm ignoring the Basque awareness of Atlantic Canada and possible Portuguese awareness of Eastern Brazil... so first colonization attempts would be a better phrase.

This looks so interesting..
 
irreconciliable differences

Spain and Portugal merged at a later date, in 1580, and the portuguese fought back to regain their independence as soon as they could, in 1640.
The reason the whole peninsula merged into Spain except for Portugal is the irrepressible nature the people of Portugal have demonstrated since they where lusitan tribesmen fighting the Romans. One must also take into acount that the oceanic exploration missions of the portuguese from the XV century where an Avis dinasty project, mostly fueled from having Castile on all the borders except the maritime one. An united Peninsula at the XV century (Only a matter of time before Castile+Portugal absorb everything else up to the french border) would have had a very different take on oceanic exploration.
No Infante don Henrique, for starters...
 
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OK, so it doesn't match the OP, but here's an idea - say the Kingdom of Galicia becomes powerful enough so as to overtake (and thus take over) the Kingdom of Asturias, whilst Galicia makes sure that Porto and Gaia do not become uppity as Galicia makes a move south. (Hence, Portugal does not exist in TTL - as a result, Portuguese and Asturian are just simply dialects of Galician.) Hence, in TTL, Galicia is not a part of the Kingdom of León; however, this requires a POD (such as repeated Viking invasions of Northwest Spain where eventually the Vikings become the Iberian analogue to the Normans, amongst other factors) that allows Galicia to remain separate and not reabsorbed into Asturias.

Speaking of León - it, on the other hand, still merges with Navarre to become Castile and operates as in OTL. The divergence here is when the Kingdom of Castile, in OTL, becomes the Crown of Castile, in the 13th century. In addition to making it a definite union of León and Castile, say the King of Castile at the time [who will be different in TTL] decides to marry a member of the Galician royal family. This, in turn, becomes the formation of Spain in TTL. *Spanish, in turn, exhibits more Galician influence in TTL (as Galician was the language of the troubadours in Iberia during the OTL Medieval period) to the point that what we consider Old/Medieval Spanish in TTL remains as the Spanish language in TTL, with only minor changes (such as Spanish using the personal infinitive, which in TTL is only a Portuguese thing).

It is, however, early enough to prevent Isabella I of Castile from existing and thus preventing the House of Trastámara from getting anywhere close to power.
 
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