Rumour and Gossip in the Rebellions of Granada and Mexico (16th–17th Centuries): The Conspiracy Mindset
During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, an infamising image of Jews as inferior, alien, usurious and perverse beings spread throughout Christendom. Christians projected onto them their own fears and vices, within a broader culture of fear. A similar process unfolded with Muslims following the conquest of Granada in 1492. Forced to convert to Christianity from the early sixteenth century onwards, and especially after the War of the Alpujarras (1568–1572), Moriscos were portrayed as a treacherous, criminal and conspiratorial flock, incapable of assimilation into the faith and customs of triumphant Catholicism.
Accounts of events insisting on this image, and establishing associations between Moriscos within the Iberian Peninsula and the external enemy (whether Ottoman or Barbary), accompanied the rumours and inventions born of fear and hatred. Persistent rumours of Morisco conspiracies across different territories of the Spanish Monarchy ultimately led to their definitive expulsion between 1609 and 1612. In those same years, two alleged conspiracies involving enslaved people and free Blacks were uncovered in the city of Mexico. This marked the beginning of a similar process of criminalisation and fear directed towards populations of African origin.
According to María Elena Martínez, the subversion of the social and political order attributed to these plots was connected to the context of the expulsion of the Moriscos in Spain. This idea opens up a broad framework for comparative and connected analysis, since in most of these processes the literature refers to the notion of conspiracy as underlying such upheavals. Nevertheless, the aim of this article is to highlight the role of rumour in shaping the conspiracy mindset as a tool of both power and resistance. Above all, as Serge Moscovici has argued, the mere existence and presence of a minority within a dominant society fosters a conspiracy mentality.
From the fifteenth century onwards, the word rumour in Castilian was synonymous with tumult, unrest and scandal, and its usage increased notably during the Golden Age. Another meaning of rumour referred to noise, understood as circulating news. These meanings confirm Gregorio Salinero’s view that many colonial plots in the 1550s and 1560s were woven out of uncertain rumours regarding discordant measures coming from the Peninsula. The socio-cultural and religious heterogeneity of medieval Spain, and its global projection during the Early Modern period, made the Laws of the Partidas a key reference for controlling language in the relationship between subjects and their opinions of the king. To murmur or listen to murmurs about the monarch was considered a sign of disobedience.
Not all murmurers, however, were judged equally, as reputation and public opinion played a crucial role in labelling individuals as murmurers or gossips. From a social perspective, Sebastián de Covarrubias defined murmurar in 1611 as “to speak ill of another under one’s breath”; and gossip, or rather the gossiper, as “one who carries news to another about something that ought to have been kept secret, having been entrusted to them, and which is told to the detriment of the person concerned, causing them distress, and recounted maliciously in order to stir up trouble and provoke conflict.”
Gossip and rumour thus functioned as forms of information imbued with conflictual intentionality in contexts of political and social unrest, while also criminalising those who spoke ill of the king. Rumour and gossip became the essential breeding ground for the creation of a conspiracy mindset surrounding Morisco and Black rebellions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Both contributed to the development of a conspiracy mentality within the dominant group. As Serge Moscovici notes, the essence of any conspiracy lies in the belief that a powerful minority is secretly working to subvert the political and social order.
In the cases examined here, we are dealing with minorities from different territories, assimilated into the political project of the monarchy as subjects who shared a single religion (Catholicism), a common legal framework, and subjection to the authority of the king and his representatives. Although their assimilation into the monarchical project was far from straightforward, there existed a fundamental similarity and interconnection between these histories, explaining the power of rumour and gossip in shaping the conspiracy mindset surrounding the rebellions in Granada and Mexico.

Fig. 1. Crispin and Scapin, oil painting by Honoré Daumier, 1858–1860.
The first factor that triggered conspiratorial thinking was the presence of powerful minorities, or their gradual empowerment through channels of cultural assimilation promoted by the monarchy itself. For instance, the Morisco elite of Granada was characterised by internal diversity, strong family-based networks, good relations with Christians, and a certain degree of economic power. Another element of empowerment was provided by confraternities, which functioned as spaces of solidarity for Moriscos in Granada and for Afro-descendants in Mexico.
In addition, enslaved and freed Afro-descendants found certain spaces of autonomy and empowerment. Many enslaved people worked as domestic servants for wealthy peninsular merchants, while some freed individuals engaged in trade. The prospect of social mobility thus distinguished them from other enslaved or free populations in rural settings. The second factor was the frustration experienced by these groups due to the lack of institutional responses to their grievances and demands, which heightened political and social tensions.
A clear example is the Pragmatic Sanction of 1567, previously suspended by Charles V in 1526, which prohibited Morisco customs and traditions in favour of enforced conversion to Catholicism. In the case of enslaved people in 1608, they had celebrated a royal coronation banquet and, when arrested, were defended by their masters to avoid punishment, arguing that such behaviour was typical of slaves. Nevertheless, the alcalde del crimen responsible for the investigation insisted on punishment, and the accused were banished to the Philippines. In 1612, a new phase emerged in the management of oppression and accumulated frustration, when the abuse of Indigenous men and women sparked extreme violence, triggering an alleged attempt at conspiracy, rebellion and tumult.

Fig. 2. Morisco Dance by Christoph Weiditz.
In general, the existence of such social minorities ensured that the dominant group constantly perceived a conspiracy mindset, at which point rumours began to circulate. According to conspiratorial theories, minorities were believed to seek the destruction of Christianity and the overthrow of the king, aided by external enemies. This was the case with the Moriscos and the perceived Ottoman threat along the Mediterranean coast, and similarly with enslaved people in Mexico City, who were allegedly connected to the cimarrones of Veracruz, alongside fears of a British invasion of the Veracruz coastline.
As Jean Delumeau argues, such rumours contain a pre-existing layer of accumulated anxieties and are the result of a mental preparation created by the convergence of multiple threats or misfortunes. According to contemporary conspiracy theories, the primary objective was the destruction of Christianity. Consequently, in both Granada and Mexico, the alleged conspiratorial events coincided with Christmas, Maundy Thursday, or Corpus Christi.
Here, rumour functioned as a warning of impending evil, while gossip served to expose and denounce subversive rumours. The authorities’ concern over whether a conspiracy had occurred was linked to a European imaginary transferred to Atlantic societies: the idea of a super-conspiracy in which the devil revealed how to destroy monarchies and churches through secret agents such as witches, Jews, Muslims, homosexuals and other heretical groups.
Holy Week was one of the most popular sacred festivals on both sides of the Atlantic. Its symbolism centred on recalling Christ’s arrest, torture and crucifixion, providing believers with an opportunity to express their own anxieties through identification with Christ’s suffering. Maundy Thursday represented a temporary inversion of social and political hierarchies, as the Pope, as Christ’s representative, washed the feet of society’s most humble members, while also commemorating Judas’s betrayal. Corpus Christi, a universal festival observed throughout Christendom since the Middle Ages, publicly celebrated the Eucharist through processions involving local authorities and confraternities. These public rituals often became occasions for popular sectors to express discontent in both Europe and the Americas.
Thus, we are not dealing with genuine conspiracies aimed at destroying religion. Rather, the role of rumour and gossip intensified the conspiracy mindset, which became a crucial instrument of repression used to control and discipline Moriscos and Afro-descendants. The Morisco case was particularly significant: after the Alpujarras rebellion, they were dispersed across the Peninsula and ultimately expelled from Spain between 1609 and 1614. In the case of enslaved people in 1608, some were publicly whipped while others were banished to the Philippines. The consequences were far more severe in 1612, when thirty-five enslaved individuals were executed and their heads displayed throughout the city.
Magdalena Díaz Hernández
Este artículo forma parte del proyecto de investigación “Encrucijada de dos Mundos: Identidad, imagen y patrimonio de Andalucía en los tiempos modernos”, Universidad de Sevilla, Tipo de Proyecto/Ayuda: PAIDI: Proyectos I+D+i
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