On his deathbed, King Jaime I of Aragon gives his sword to his son, begging him not to sheath it until the Muslims have been totally expulsed and the Reconquista completed.

In this work, Pinazo presents a subject directly related to his homeland of Valencia, where this abdication took place. The painting was made to be sent to the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1881 after the success of an earlier version on the same subject which Pinazo made for the Regional Government of Valencia.

The artist made this composition with a very free and relaxed technique, marking the silhouettes with decisive black lines and applying the paint with great energy in large patches. As a result he received considerable criticism for the work's practically unfinished appearance. The light that illuminates the darkness was one of the best-used techniques here, as would become frequent in Valencian painting.

This work was acquired in 1881 for the Prado Museum and later sent to the Museum of Modern Art.