Policing Granada’s depopulation merely relocated Morisco banditry to northern Spain

Evidence

One of the consequences of the enforced depopulation of Granada that had just taken place was that it became easier for the authorities to suppress lawlessness in the mountains of the Kingdom of Granada in the south. But after Morisco banditry was extinguished there in Andalusia, it came to life again further north. From 1577 and up to the end of the century, Morisco outlaws committed a series of outrages outside Granada as impressive as any ascribed to their predecessors of earlier generations inside former Nasrid territory. It was difficult to capture those responsible in Castile and Aragon because of the complicity of the local Morisco communities. The regions of Valladolid, Pastrana, ´Ubeda, Seville, Badajoz, and elsewhere suffered from attacks. Finally Francisco Hern´andez de Li´evana (Boronat 1901, 1: 301–2), president of the chancery of Valladolid, was given the special mission of eradicating such banditry. He established that some two hundred people had been killed between 1577 and 1581, and by 1582 he was claiming to have the situation under control (Dom´ınguez and Vincent 1978, 144n.). — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1179

Categorization

• QUESTION: The deportations from Granada produced an unintended spillover of banditry into Castile and Aragon — a pattern suggesting repression in one zone merely redistributes disorder. Worth chasing whether the same dynamic recurs in the later expulsion.