Alfonso X in the context of Nuño González de Lara (died 1275)

During the High Middle Ages, the Islamic world was an important contributor to the global cultural scene, innovating and supplying information and ideas to Europe, via Al-Andalus, Sicily and the Crusader kingdoms in the Levant. These included Latin translations of the Greek Classics and of Arabic texts in astronomy, mathematics, science, and medicine. Translation of Arabic philosophical texts into Latin "led to the transformation of almost all philosophical disciplines in the medieval Latin world", with a particularly strong influence of Muslim philosophers being felt in natural philosophy, psychology and metaphysics. Other contributions included technological and scientific innovations via the Silk Road, including Chinese inventions such as paper, compass and gunpowder.

The Islamic world also influenced other aspects of medieval European culture, partly by innovations made during the Islamic Golden Age, including various fields such as the arts, agriculture, alchemy, music, pottery, etc.

In the Middle Ages, the Galician-Portuguese lyric, also known as troubadorism, from trovadorismo in Portuguese and trobadorismo in Galician, was a lyric poetic school or movement. All told, there are around 1680 texts in the so-called secular lyric or lírica profana (see Cantigas de Santa Maria for the religious lyric). At the time Galician-Portuguese was the language used in nearly all of Iberia for lyric (as opposed to epic) poetry. From this language derives both modern Galician and Portuguese. The school, which was influenced to some extent (mainly in certain formal aspects) by the Occitan troubadours, is first documented at the end of the twelfth century and lasted until the middle of the fourteenth, with its zenith coming in the middle of the thirteenth century, centered on the person of Alfonso X, The Wise King. It is the earliest known poetic movement in Galicia or Portugal and represents not only the beginnings of but one of the high points of poetic history in both countries and in medieval Europe. Modern Galicia has seen a revival movement called neotrobadorismo.

The earliest extant composition in this school is usually agreed to be Ora faz ost' o senhor de Navarra by João Soares de Paiva, usually dated just before or after 1200. Traditionally, the end of the period of active trovadorismo is given as 1350, the date of the testament of D. Pedro, Count of Barcelos (natural son of King Dinis of Portugal), who left a Livro de Cantigas (songbook) to his nephew, Alfonso XI of Castile.

The Libro de los juegos (Spanish: "Book of games"), or Libro de axedrez, dados e tablas ("Book of chess, dice and tables", in Old Spanish), is a 13th century Spanish treatise of chess that synthesizes the information from Arabic works on this same topic, dice and tables (backgammon forebears) games, commissioned by Alfonso X of Castile, Galicia and León and completed in his scriptorium in Toledo in 1283. It contains the earliest European treatise on chess as well as being the oldest document on European tables games, and is an exemplary piece of the literary legacy of the Toledo School of Translators.