The Fall of Granada and the Broken Promise

The year 1492 marked not only Columbus’s voyage to the Americas but also the end of Muslim rule in Iberia. When Boabdil, the last Nasrid ruler of Granada, surrendered the city to Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic Monarchs initially promised religious tolerance. The Treaty of Granada guaranteed Muslims the right to practice Islam, retain their legal system, and preserve cultural traditions. Hernando de Talavera, Granada’s first archbishop, embodied this spirit of coexistence. A compassionate humanist, he learned Arabic, adapted Christian teachings to local customs, and opposed forced conversions. Under his guidance, mass baptisms occurred voluntarily—a scene some compared to the early days of Christianity in Jerusalem.

Yet this fragile peace would soon shatter. The arrival of Cardinal Francisco Ximénez de Cisneros in 1499 marked a turning point. This firebrand cleric, confessor to Queen Isabella, viewed tolerance as heresy. He orchestrated the burning of priceless Arabic manuscripts (including scientific and philosophical works) in Granada’s Plaza Bib-Rambla, forcibly baptized Muslims, and shuttered mosques. When protests erupted in the Albaicín quarter, Talavera alone prevented bloodshed by walking unarmed into the mob—a moment of moral courage overshadowed by coming storms.

The Iron Fist: Conversion or Exile

By 1501, the Crown abandoned all pretense of tolerance. Muslims faced an impossible choice: convert to Christianity (becoming “Moriscos”) or exile. Most chose nominal conversion, but their secret adherence to Islam became an open secret. They practiced Islamic rituals privately, washed off baptismal water, and maintained underground religious schools. The Alpujarras Mountains, a rugged region south of Granada, became a bastion of resistance. Here, Morisco rebels used the terrain to their advantage—in 1501, they annihilated a Spanish cavalry force under Don Alonso de Aguilar by rolling boulders onto the narrow paths below.

For decades, Spain turned a blind eye to this crypto-Islam, so long as Moriscos paid taxes and avoided open rebellion. But in 1567, Philip II enacted draconian laws: banning Arabic, mandating Christian attire, and even prohibiting traditional baths. The final provocation came when authorities destroyed the Alhambra’s exquisite baths—a cultural landmark and daily necessity for a cleanliness-obsessed society.

The Alpujarras Revolt: A War of Survival

In 1568, the powder keg exploded. A tax dispute in Granada sparked a full-scale rebellion led by Farax Aben Farax, a dyer with royal Nasrid ancestry. The Alpujarras, with its terraced farms and impregnable gorges, became a guerrilla stronghold. Moriscos desecrated churches, killed priests, and employed brutal tactics—burying Christian captives alive or impaling them on hooks. Spanish reprisals were equally savage: villages were torched, and caves where families hid were smoked out like animal dens.

Key figures emerged on both sides:
– Hernando de Valor, a disgraced nobleman proclaimed king by rebels, whose incompetence doomed early victories
– Don Juan of Austria, Philip II’s illegitimate half-brother, who crushed the revolt with systematic brutality
– Aben Abó, the rebellion’s true military genius, whose severed head would later adorn Granada’s gates

The war’s most poignant moment came at the Tablete Gorge, where a lone friar crossed a crumbling bridge under Morisco arrows—inspiring Spanish troops to follow. By 1570, the revolt ended in genocide. Survivors were enslaved or marched to northern Spain; many died en route from starvation.

The Great Expulsion and Spain’s Self-Inflicted Wound

The final act came in 1609-1614, when Philip III ordered the expulsion of all Moriscos—over 300,000 people. They fled to North Africa, France, and the Ottoman Empire, taking with them:
– Agricultural expertise (Spain’s irrigation systems collapsed, causing famines)
– Silk and sugar production techniques
– Linguistic heritage (Modern Spanish lost thousands of Arabic-derived words)

Contemporary voices celebrated the expulsion. Lope de Vega wrote victory plays; Velázquez painted the departure scenes. Only later would historians recognize the catastrophe: the loss of skilled artisans, farmers, and intellectuals accelerated Spain’s decline from global powerhouse to backward nation.

Echoes in the Modern World

The Morisco tragedy reverberates today:
– Cultural erasure vs. multiculturalism: A cautionary tale about forced assimilation
– Refugee crises: The mass displacement foreshadowed modern diaspora traumas
– Historical memory: Recent Spanish documentaries and novels reexamine this suppressed chapter

As the last Moriscos sailed from Denia in 1614, a civilization that had flourished for 800 years vanished—leaving only the Alhambra’s silent courtyards to whisper of what was lost. Spain, in purging its “other,” had severed its own roots to the Enlightenment. The true last sigh was not Boabdil’s, but a nation’s unconscious farewell to its own golden age.