At the turn of the 1570s, vast portions of the Albaicín and Alcazaba neighborhoods in Granada underwent a double process of ruination. Houses there first suffered the devastation of two years of armed conflict, during the Alpujarras war––which had started as a Morisco revolt in these very neighborhoods in the winter of 1568. Then, after Philip II forced the exile of most of city’s population of Muslim descent as punishment for the rebellion, through deportations that began in the winter of 1569, most of these houses were abandoned. As walls and roofs began to crumble, the Spanish crown instituted a policy that extended its punitive agenda to the urban fabric: it was established that all residential buildings that had belonged to resettled Moriscos would be left to deteriorate.
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