Conversions and Expulsions
During the Islamic administration, Christians and Jews were allowed to retain their religions by paying a tax (jizya). Penalty for not paying it was imprisonment. During the time of the Almoravids and especially the Almohads some were treated badly, in contrast to the policies of the earlier Umayyad Caliphs and later Emirs.
The new Christian hierarchy demanded heavy taxes from non-Christians and gave them rights, such as in the Treaty of Granada (1491) only for Moors in recently Islamic Granada. It expelled the Jews. In 1496 the Alhambra decree under Archbishop Hernando de Talavera dismissed the Treaty of Granada and now the Muslim population of Granada was forced to convert or be expelled. In 1502, Queen Isabella I declared conversion to Catholicism compulsory within the Kingdom of Castile. King Charles V did the same to Moors in the Kingdom of Aragon in 1526, forcing conversions of its Muslim population during the Revolt of the Germanies. These policies were not only religious in nature but also effectively seized any wealth of the exiled.
Most of the descendants of those Muslims and Jews who submitted to compulsory conversion to Christianity rather than exile during the early periods of the Inquisition, the Moriscos and Conversos respectively, were later expelled from Spain, when the Inquisition was at its height, and Portugal. The expulsion was carried out more severely in Eastern Spain (Valencia and Aragon), due to local animosity towards Muslims and Moriscos where they were seen as economic rivals by the citizenry. A major Morisco revolt happened in 1568, and the final Expulsion of the Moriscos from Castile in 1609, and from Aragon in 1610.
Because some Muslims and Jews shared ancestors in common with some Christians, it was difficult to expel all of those with any non-Christian ancestors from Castile or Aragon. However the Crowns, with the techniques of the Spanish Inquisition, killed, imprisoned, or expelled the converso "Moriscos" and Marranos. Those descended from Muslims or Jews practicing at the time of the Reconquista's close were perpetually suspected of various crimes against the Spanish state including continued practice of Islam or Judaism, and any survivors were finally all expelled by the close of the next century.
Read more about this topic: Reconquista