Moriscos formed only about four percent of Spain’s population

Evidence

Perhaps an adjustment of some 10 per cent will compensate for, among other things, clandestine emigration and those lost in fighting and give a figure of some 300,000 to 330,000 (always bearing in mind that guesswork has played a large part in arriving at this estimate). It will be seen that some one-third of a million out of some eight million or more gives a proportion of about one to twenty-five, or very approximately 4 percent. This estimate may err by a considerable margin, but even if the number of Moriscos were to need to be increased by as much as a further 25 percent, to a total of, say, half a million, the overall percentage in the country would be scarcely exceed 5 percent of the total population. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 93

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader literature on how minority populations are politically magnified far beyond their demographic weight — parallels historical antisemitism and modern immigration panics where tiny minorities are perceived as existential threats.
• SEED: An essay angle: ‘One in twenty-five’ — how imperial powers manufacture existential threat from numerically trivial minorities, using imperial Spain’s Morisco panic as a case study.