From the above review of the literature of the west Iberia Margin, several important conclusions can be drawn:
1. The west Iberia Margin is an example of a nonvolcanic rifted continental margin. Onshore, there is evidence of only very limited intrusive and extrusive activity accompanying the rifting. Offshore, there is no direct evidence of synrift volcanism but there is indirect evidence of important volumes of lower crustal intrusives within part of the ocean/continent transition.
2. Late Variscan strike-slip faults and trends played a key role in influencing the development and evolution of the west Iberia Margin, not only onshore, in the formation of sedimentary basins, but also offshore, in the way in which rifting propagated, possibly intermittently, along the margin.
3. There has been a long history of rifting on this margin beginning in the Late Triassic. Continental breakup occurred from south to north in the Early Cretaceous between 134 and possibly 112 Ma, beginning about 70 Ma after rifting first began.
4. The ocean/continent transition, that region between the edge of the continental shelf and the landward edge of thin oceanic crust generated at the onset of seafloor spreading, is marked by a peridotite basement ridge and remains a key area of research. The oceanward part of the ocean/continent transition is least understood yet probably retains the most critical information regarding the tectonic and magmatic processes that controlled the temporal and spatial transition from continental to oceanic crust. The most plausible, but not the only, explanation for it seems to be that this part of the ocean/continent transition consists of fragments of magmatically disrupted and intruded thinned continental crust.
5. This margin has twice, in Eocene and Miocene times, suffered a compressional episode since rifting ended. The effect of these two compressional episodes on the margin has been to fold, reactivate old Variscan structures, some of which had been previously reactivated during the rifting episodes, and cause minor faulting within the abyssal plain sediments. Onshore, many of the main late Variscan structures were also reactivated.