For many, the title of this chapter will sound paradoxical: if there is one thing which the Moriscos rarely, if ever, enjoyed during the more than a hundred years that passed between their forced conversion at the beginning of the sixteenth century and their expulsion from Spain between 1609 and 1614, it is justice. For anyone who has read the numerous Inquisition trial records or the hundreds of documents created by and for the expulsion, there can be little doubt that the Moriscos were nearly always the victims of justice rather than its beneficiaries. And yet it is not as paradoxical as it may seem if we understand the term ‘justice’ in its widest sense, to include all the machinery and operations of the law, such as local justice, judges, mayors, policemen, local and national law courts up to and including the Royal Chanceries. In their contact with the wider justice system, the day-to-day reality of the Moriscos differed substantially from that found only in the inquisitorial records.

An excellent example of this is an amusing incident that took place in Villarrubia in March 1591. Yuste de Yébenes and Francisco Pérez, imprisoned as a result of ‘breaking and entering, causing injuries and other crimes committed against Mari López, a devout religious woman, and Catalina, daughter of Juan López’ (both of them Morisco women), escaped from the public gaol of the town, aided, according to Francisco de Vera, the Governor and chief magistrate of Villarrubia, by the policemen and gaolers Gabriel and Andrés Niño, Juan Rodríguez, and Francisco el Rubio, all of them Moriscos, the same as the men imprisoned.