History of the Moriscos and the Decrees of New Plant

The Morisco and Mudejar Experience

The term Morisco refers to the Mudejar population in Spain who, from the early sixteenth century, were forced to convert to Christianity. The Catholic Monarchs violated their guarantee of religious freedom, causing serious tensions that led to the uprising of 1500, which was crushed a year later. Since 1502, the Moors were forced to choose between conversion or expulsion.

During the first half of the sixteenth century, evangelization proceeded. However, during the reign of Charles I, the Moriscos—thanks to the support they provided him during the Revolt of the Comuneros—gained more flexibility, allowing them to preserve certain institutions and maintain their own personality despite their conversion to Christianity.

Philip II sought to eliminate these differential features, displaying a deep religious orthodoxy: in 1566, he banned the use of Arabic and Muslim ceremonies. As a result, the Uprising of the Alpujarras (1571) occurred, which was suppressed, leading to the deportation of the Moriscos of Granada to La Mancha and Castilla-La Vieja.

They lived in the countryside under harsh conditions, subjected as vassals to their lay lords. They were systematically persecuted by the Inquisition and were both hated and feared by the rulers. Philip III eventually decreed their total expulsion, completed in 1616, which especially affected Valencia, where 20% of the population was lost. This had a devastating impact on agriculture and bourgeois centers, often cited as a primary cause of the Spanish decline in the seventeenth century.

Decrees of New Plant

The Decrees of New Plant were a series of mandates that abolished the self-government of Aragon, Valencia, Mallorca, and Catalonia in the early eighteenth century. They were issued by Philip V (1700–1746) in response to the support these regions rendered to the Archduke Charles of Austria during the War of the Spanish Succession. These decrees were part of a policy of reform and the strengthening of royal authority across the state.

Key Legislative Actions

• 1707: Promulgation of decrees for Aragon and Valencia, abolishing their privileges.
• 1715: Decree for Mallorca, which partially retained one institution.
• 1716: Decree for Catalonia, which reorganized the political and legal regime of the Principality, disbanded its institutions, and banned the Catalan language in trials.

Centralizing Measures

These decrees represented a significant step toward the standardization of the territories, though some peculiarities remained, such as civil Catalan and Aragonese laws and old regional currencies. Centralizing measures included:

• Disappearance of the former private courts of these kingdoms.
• Obligation to use the Castilian language in official matters.
• Modification of the former municipal organization to match the Castilian model.
• Introduction of a flat tax—called the "Cadastre" in Catalonia—which taxed all inhabitants according to their wealth.