After numerous attacks, finally overcoming the resistance of the Basques, who have been staunch defenders of the independence of their land for many years, in 409, to the Vandals, some ranks of Alani and a branch of the Swabians, he managed to cross the Pyrenees gorges. Much of the Iberian Peninsula was sacked; and then, around 411, the invaders thus divided the country: the Swabians and the Asdingi Vandals took up residence in Galicia, the Alans in Lusitania and Carthage, the Silingi Vandals in Betica. The Tarraconense province remained in the dominion of the Romans, who also continued to rule the most important cities of the other provinces. A few years later a new danger appeared on the horizon, because in 415, forced to cross the Pyrenees, the Visigoths occupied Barcelona, where their king Ataulf was killed. However,foederati of the empire, they defeated the Silingi Vandals and the Alans – who then joined the Asdingi and submitted to their sovereign – and after the victory they abandoned the peninsula to settle in Aquitaine, granted to them by Honorius (418). Furthermore, when discord broke out between the Swabians and the Vandals, the latter together with the Alans moved to Betica (420), and, after having beaten the Roman and Visigothic forces of the magister militum Castino, sacked the Balearics and conquered Cartagena and Seville, already garrisoned by Roman garrison, in 429 with Genseric they preferred to pass into Mauretania.
But this partial Roman restoration had a short duration, even if it deserves this name. The Swabians always remained on the peninsula; in the countryside of Tarraconense, a peasant revolt (bagauda) soon began to take on frightening forms ; and the internal struggles of the empire, while weakening every day its capacity to resist against the onslaught of the enemies, made the attitude of its foederati uncertain, who subordinated respect for the foedus to the turbulent events of such struggles.. Thus, before death gloriously seized him on the Catalaunian fields in the fight against the Huns (451), in which his troops were alongside those of the Romans, the Franks and the Burgundians, the Visigoth Theodoric I in the periods of war against the empire also fought in Roman Spain, now for, now against, now independently of the Suebi. And these, either by the help they had or by taking advantage of the situation, were able to extend their dominions in Betica and Carthaginian and conquer Zaragoza. Later, the accession to the imperial throne of Avitus, supported by the Visigoths (455), led the latter to fight again in favor of the empire: the revolt of the bagaudawas suffocated and King Theodoric II managed to stop forever the progress of the kingdom of the Swabians, which, after a few years, was overwhelmed by the civil war and almost disappeared from history to reappear only the day before its end. But the agreement did not survive the Avito government; and, on the other hand, the successes of Flavio Giuliano Maioriano also had a very short duration, who personally moved against the Visigoths to reduce their dominions in Gaul and to curb their incursions into the Iberian Peninsula. He was the last emperor to touch Spanish soil (460). Then events precipitated. While the empire was falling apart, it was not difficult for the Visigoths to expand their possessions in Gaul; and, replaced the previous raids by expeditions of actual conquest, around 470 their king Eurychus was able to become lord of a large part of Spain: with the exception, that is, of Galicia and of an area, with unsafe borders, of Lusitania, which remained in the possession of the Swabians, and of some vast mountainous territories that indigenous or Hispano-Roman nobility managed to keep independent. Moreover, a few years before his death, the monarch also provided to codify the national law of his people again. And perhaps the division of the lands between the invaders and the Hispanic-Roman owners belongs to his time, which is to be considered at least partially with the criteria that the Swabians had already applied in the north-western region, which the Visigoths themselves had followed in Aquitaine and which, moreover, had been established infoedus.
According to EZINESPORTS.COM, the state of Eurychus (467-85), which had its capital in Toulouse, then became the most powerful political body in the West. But it was hardly formed that it just missed it did not collapse. To the advance of Clovis and the Franks, who, as Catholics, could almost give the character of a religious crusade to their war against the Arian Visigoths, and also for this they found valid help in the Roman element, Alaric II (485-507) tried to resist by opposing arms to arms and, to win their hearts, by showing tolerance towards Catholics and (506) by codifying the rights of Roman subjects (Lex romana Visigothorum or Breviarium alaricianum). But at Vogladum he was defeated and killed (507); and his were driven back to the Pyrenees.
