Prosecutions against dubious outsiders can double as covert counterintelligence operations.

Evidence

The alcalde can hardly have thought it likely that a man with Contreras’s background would really lead a Morisco rising, or be asked to do so by the local people! But by the same token a man with his odd and dubious reputation would serve very well as a scapegoat, if it turned out that a scapegoat was needed. There must also be the possibility that Contreras went to Hornachos in the first place as an agent of the authorities and that the prosecution opened against him was either intended to mislead the Moriscos or was a mistake. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1712

Categorization

• FICTION: This double-agent-as-scapegoat ambiguity is rich narrative material for espionage fiction set in early modern Spain.