Spanish authorities fabricated captured letters to justify their war propaganda

Evidence

This dispatch was allegedly captured and translated for Don John of Austria. We know from the register of state papers translated by Alonso del Castillo that the falsification of “captured” dispatches for propaganda purposes certainly took place in this war. There is thus every reason to be distrustful of texts such as the one printed by M´armol, but even if we reject it as wholly spurious, it would still show that there existed a suspicion on the Christian side that such correspondence arising from contacts between Moriscos and Turks was probably taking place. And we know from the documents from the Ottoman archives edited by Temimi and others that such suspicions were well founded. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1569

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: how regime-documented ‘captured intelligence’ can be propaganda even when independently verified on the other side — a case study in triangulating contested sources.
• CANDY: A juicy historiographical gotcha: the Spanish printed fake ‘captured letters’ from rebels partly to justify atrocities, yet the letters’ content matched what Ottoman archives independently show.
• XREF: connects to: A newspaper circulation war helped spark the Spanish-American War — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 204; Hearst fabricated visual atrocity propaganda to provoke a war — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 205; An unexplained 1898 explosion was blamed on Spain by the yellow press — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 207