Versão portuguesa aqui.

The first King of Portugal was born on July 25, 1109 in Guimarães, and died in Galicia on December 6, 1185.

He who was the most Illustrious of the Portuguese, and who architected and gave body and soul to the Portuguese Nation, left his indelible mark on all subsequent episodes of our History; always being a reference of courage, and love for the homeland that he himself founded. Afonso was the eldest son of Count Henrique da Burgonha (a crusader who came to help his grandfather D. Afonso VI of León in the conquest of Toledo from the Moors) and of Dona Teresa, a bastard daughter of the King; having been created by Soeiro Mendes de Sousa and his wife, in Condado Portucalense; having been subjected to a noble education, especially in the political aspect, becoming a unifying and legitimizing element of the Nation.

In the year 1120, (note that he was only 11 years old) D. Afonso together with Dom Paio Archbishop of Braga, took a political position contrary to that of his mother who supported the Travas; and by virtue of his position he was forced to emigrate together with Dom Paio; having been knighted at the age of 13.

At the age of 19 and on his return to Condado in 1128, he faced and defeated the hosts of Fernão Peres de Trava in the Battle of São Mamede; immediately and firmly assuming the county government, with the aim of confirming independence.

To this end, he defined a policy based on the defense of his county against León and Castile to the north and east, and against the Moors to the south. He negotiated with the Holy See, in order to see the independence of his kingdom recognized, and to achieve the full autonomy of the Portuguese Church.

Dom Afonso Henriques founded the Monastery of Santa Cruz in Coimbra in the year 1131, erected several castles, notably Leiria in the year 1135; being one of the nerve and strategic points for the development and consolidation of the reconquest.

In 1137 he defeated the Leonese at Cerneja, and in 1139 he won the Battle of Ourique against the Moors; victory that marked the path of expansion to the South; in fact, it is with the victory in the battle of Ourique that Portugal begins to outline the project of becoming a great Nation.

When he began to call himself King in 1143, he paid homage to the Holy See; and at the meeting in Zamora, his Kingship was definitively recognized by Dom Afonso VII of León.

However, it was only in 1179 with the Bull Manifesto Evidence of Pope Alexander III that he was designated King, he was then 70 years old; being granted the right to conquer territories from the Moors to enlarge their territory, which in practice he had already done.

The conquests of the cities of Santarém and Lisbon in 1147, with the help of the crusaders, were followed by Almada and Palmela, which surrendered without a fight.

In 1159, it conquered Évora and Beja, which it would lose shortly afterwards to the Moors, having reconquered them in 1162 with the help of Geraldo Sem Pavor.

Upon his death, “the warrior King” left his son Dom Sancho I a defined and independent territory.

His maternal grandfather Afonso VI King of León and Castile who took Toledo from the Moors, and the grandson he did not know because he was born in the year he died “1109” would have been proud of his grandson Afonso; because, like him, he left marks and deeds that visibly impressed the imagination of his contemporaries; and above all of the generations that followed, with great emphasis on the 16th century; in which Portugal assumes itself as the first globalizing Nation.

There is a lot of distortion in Castilian and Portuguese chronicles from the end of the 20th century. XIII a hundred years after his death; many of his achievements being omitted for political convenience on the part of Spain; with many of your data and achievements being lost in time.

The story of D. Afonso Henriques, even before this deformation, impressed anyone who heard it. The simple son of a Count vassal of the King of León, who died (1112) when he was still a three-year-old child, D. Afonso Henriques (who was born in 1109) before reaching the age of majority, had already withdrawn the government of the county from her mother and her Galician lover (one of the greatest lords of the time) Fernão Peres de Trava, with whom she had lived since her father's death; being from this moment that it has to fight in three fronts; Leonese, Galician and Moorish, apart from some setbacks, would almost always emerge victorious.

In 1139–1140 he decides to adopt the title of King of the Portuguese; and in 1143 he managed to get D. Afonso VII of León and Castile to recognize his right to call himself that.

Between 1140 and 1169, its history is that of a whole series of victories over the Moors that allowed it to move the frontier of reconquest from the line of the Mondego river to the interior of the province of Alentejo, that is, far to the south of the line of the Tagus. .

Although the Moorish counterattacks, at the end of his reign, caused him to lose part of the southern territory already reconquered, the Tagus line would never again be crossed by the Moors; and the two great cities of Lisbon and Santarém never ceased to be Portuguese.

All this succession of victories could not fail to impress his contemporaries due to the unexpected accident that it caused in 1169 in Badajoz, the arrest at the age of 60 of the King of Portugal, by his son-in-law King D. Fernando de Leão.

D. Afonso Henriques became a prisoner after the bolt of one of the city's gates broke his right leg as he left on his horse.

This disaster that he was a victim of is mentioned in the formulas that serve to date some Leonese documents; they speak of the “year in which the king of Portugal was taken prisoner in Badajoz”. Quickly released by his son-in-law in exchange for some cities he still owned in Galicia, D. Afonso Henriques reigned until 1185, when he had reached 76 years of age.

His tomb is in the Monastery of Santa Cruz in Coimbra, opposite the tomb of his son D. Sancho I.

Dom Afonso Henriques, son of a bastard daughter of the King of León, conquered his territory with the sword, but was a condescending man with the peoples he subjugated to his Kingdom; where many chose to stay, to live peacefully with us for hundreds of years; Bearing this in mind are the thousands of names of towns and villages from north to south of Portugal, which still bear the same Moorish names as before the reconquest.

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