Migratory flows (16th–19th century)

There is something of a gap between the bundle of motives attendant on the expulsion of the Jews, then of the Muslims from Spain and the representation that would prevail in the Iberian Peninsula's collective mindset for centuries. This representation is founded in mutual fear, that of an “Islamic solidarity” on the one hand and of a Christian reaction on the other to the extent that, in period documents, each Muslim Morisco has become suspect to the Christians and each Christian, in Morisco eyes, is deemed a potential spy working for the Inquisitorial state. Any event, (the Morisco Revolt^[1] of 1568-1570, acts of piracy, Ottoman advance, diplomatic negotiations between Muslim and Protestant powers...) was thus seized upon to stoke a permanent feeling of mistrust. To that end, the immediate past, replete with Almoravid^[2], Almohad^[3] and Marinid^[4] expeditions could reliably be summoned. The Jews, who did not have a community of states to support them were expelled first. The Muslims who enjoyed faith-based solidarity – credited to them rightly or wrongly – earned a reprieve lasting over a century. In both instances, a Spanish identity was being constructed around one major principle : that of a unified Catholicity that banished all that did not answer to it.

The devising of negative images would support the assertion according to which « togetherness is impossible » between two worlds presented as tight-knit and essentially different. That is the substance of Louis Cardaillac's thesis, who notes « the absence of any trace of a compromise ». Condemnatory representations were ferried around by Spanish churchmen and historiographers. In his book on Moriscos, Miguel Angel de Bunes Ibarra studied the output of authors who had lived at the time. He notes that they « were all in favour of the expulsion of the Moriscos, reflecting in this public opinion » and that « the moral and religious authorities knew that the Moriscos presented no real danger for Spain's security but exploited the situation to their political ends ». He concludes that those historiographers' output is a mouthpiece of propaganda justifying the expulsion. With this in mind data were systematically censored, to the extent that significant information to the detriment of the Spanish Catholic church was kept from the king. Such behaviour illustrates the considerable power enjoyed by religious authorities, which made challenging their position inconceivable : simplistic representations were made to fit in with the official line.

The leading ideologist for expulsion was the Archbishop of Valencia, Patriarch Ribera^[5] who relied on the writings from apologists of the Catholic faith. They deny the Moriscos' « hispanity », they view them as a « permanent threat » and by contrast, they hail Philip III^[6] as a « champion of Spain » having « finally completed the Reconquista, and this time for good ». The documents of the Holland collection (memoirs and correspondence kept between 1542 and 1610) show that the leading theoretician of a Spanish state founded in the concept of ‘race' is a member of the inquisitorial court in Valencia, the Dominican friar Fray Jaime Bleda^[7], author of a book in which he develops theories aimed at showing that the    « elimination of the Moriscos is an urgent necessity ». The tenor of this never challenged current of thought goes something like this : the Moriscos are Moors, they arrived in Spain as Muslims and as such they must leave it. The propaganda work, steeped in disinformation, prepared the ground for public opinion to support the expulsion measures.

The Spanish mindscape at the time is confined to the production of stereotyped and negative images concerning the Moriscos as well as the Jews. Tales and legends, sayings, ‘racially' slanted behaviours, false testimony, folk songs are as many vehicles for the view that in Old Christians' eyes the rejected group has no history, no geographical base – thus no homeland – they are the object of systematic discrimination and humiliation. Pedro Aznar Cardona, having long investigated them quotes reports according to which any « Morisco is a suspect because he will be involved in some conspiracy or other » and furthermore that « their manners were those of the children and family of Satan ». The Catholic Monarchs had understood early that collective representations were of crucial importance to the sound consolidation of their power. The construction of the ‘national myth' rests on two pillars : that of a group it will be easy to attack and expel versus the opposite group whose mission – deemed ‘holy' – is to stand united behind their king in the fight against the ‘infidel', the ‘heretic', be they Jews, Muslims, Protestants, Turks, Moors or Moriscos.

Specialists of the Morisco question such as Louis Cardillac, Miguel Angel de Burnes Ibara, Antonio Dominguez, Bernard Vincent, Guillermo Gosalbes Busto or Raphaël Carrasco have, each in his own way referred to the « antagonistic relationships » arising from a certain idea of ‘culture' or ‘civilisation' and rooted in « reciprocal rejection » a « refusal to compromise ». Rodrigo de Zayas goes so far as to use the expression « State racism » to qualify the policy of 16^th and 17^th century Spanish kings, the federative drive of which posited a prior religious unification as the crucible of the nation. This term is however to be handled with care as we must guard against anachronism: this policy cannot be historically explained by racism as it is generally understood today. It is incidentally in the 20^th century that alternative readings of the ‘Morisco question' were undertaken. Yet recent representations are not without their own twists, on the one hand because General Franco relied on the support of Muslim soldiers from Morocco to fight the Republican government in 1936 whilst presenting himself as the champion of Catholicism, on the other hand because Muslim immigration into Spain since the nineteen seventies presents us with a new lens to read the past.