Imperial Spain felt threatened by a minority of only 4 percent

Evidence

The major power in the world at this time, imperial Spain, felt itself under threat inside its own borders from a minority that constituted perhaps one in twenty-five of its total population. True, in certain strategically important areas (in Granada, until Granadans were deported in the 1570s, and on the sea coast of Valencia right up to the end) the Moriscos might indeed represent a military threat if they were ever to receive substantial and sustained overseas aid. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 97

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with contemporary security panics where objectively minor groups are framed as existential menaces — connects to work on moral panics and threat inflation.
• DEEPTHINKING: The sober arithmetic — the most powerful empire on earth feeling endangered by 4% of its own population — is a sharp case study in how elite threat perception can diverge almost entirely from demographic reality, worth sitting with as a lens on policy rationality.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 97