A scapegoat can be manufactured when an investigation needs a suspect quickly.

Evidence

Why, then, did he (allegedly) arrest and torture Contreras? We have to bear in mind that L´opez Madera was expected to produce rapid results, particularly because he and his masters would have been aware that the proclamation of Expulsion was imminent. They would have wished to unmask the plotters before it was too late. To break down the notorious Hornachero wall of silence would have required more time than was really available. L´opez Madera may have calculated that if Contreras was poking about in some outbuildings in Hornachos, it was because he already knew something was likely to be found there. So Contreras was the possible weak point, a man on whom pressure might be exerted more effectively than on any hardened local arriero. One of the charges against Contreras was that he accepted bribes from the Moriscos of Hornachos to keep quiet about the arms he had discovered. That would have been a natural assumption to make: the Hornacheros were skilled in getting what they needed by means of bribes. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1712

Categorization

• QUESTION: Contreras’s actual role — agent provocateur, victim, or scapegoat — is left genuinely ambiguous; worth chasing in primary sources.