State expulsion orders could be stalled for years by local powerful patronage

Evidence

The Val de Ricote was in fact one of the very last areas to be cleared. The reasons for this are puzzling. Perhaps there was some uncertainty as to whether this mountain fastness in the south east of the peninsula had been caught by the edicts of 1609 and January 1610. More likely, it was being protected by powerful interests. The redoubtable reputation of these independent mountain folk may have helped to save them for so long. Whatever the cause, 1611 found the inhabitants of the Val de Ricote still residing on the land of their ancestors. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1536

Categorization

• XREF: Parallel to the reader’s theme of small acts of decorum or resistance mattering against large impersonal state power, and to Milgrom’s point that institutions emerge where enforcement gaps exist.