All the elements of the Spanish people already existed in the Kingdom of the Catholic Goths; the Latinized Celtiberian race, or Hispano-Romans, the Gothic element, and the Catholic faith. These elements, however, were as yet uncombined, and still lacked that thorough fusion which was to make one people out of them, with a character and historical destiny of its own. The Muslim invasion encouraged the Goths and Hispano-Romans, in the mountains of the north, became one people with one religion and one national aspiration, to reconquer their Spanish fatherland and make the Cross triumph over the Crescent.