I cannot help but think Spain's economic development would have gone better had they not expelled Iberia's bourgeoisie and cosmopolitan community.
I'm definitely inclined to agree with this, though, I don't know how much they could have done to go against all the gold and silver, and accompanying inflation, that came to Spain from the New World and its negative impact on the Spanish economy.
Well, a Spain that doesn't expel these groups is also a Spain that may take a different attitude towards indigenous populations. They might set up trading colonies and trade manufactured goods for gold and silver, as opposed to simply looting.
Well, they are still going to have the violence of the Reconquista just behind them
Any *Spain that does the Reconquista in the same way as OTL, with its religious framing, is going to expel the Moriscos and the Jews or at least make life hell for them. To have tolerant Iberia in the end, you would probably need a slower, less religious Reconquista.
I'm definitely inclined to agree with this, though, I don't know how much they could have done to go against all the gold and silver, and accompanying inflation, that came to Spain from the New World and its negative impact on the Spanish economy.
Well, a Spain that doesn't expel these groups is also a Spain that may take a different attitude towards indigenous populations. They might set up trading colonies and trade manufactured goods for gold and silver, as opposed to simply looting.
Well, they are still going to have the violence of the Reconquista just behind them
Slower? it took nearly 800 years... it's hard to get any slower war.
The expulsion of the jews, and much later the moriscos, had more to do with an ideological motivation of the Catholic Kings than actual religious zeal. They saw how the peninsule was becoming unified under their rule. The slow switch to a professional army instead of a nobiliar one made the nobility obsolete, and allowed them to purge their power, and centralize all the decisions on the kings. So they had one peninsule politically unified (yeah, they were working on a solution to the portuguese problem) after conquering Granada. They had one monarchy centripeting all the power. They thought it was logical to go the next step and have one religion.
Plus, most of the lenders were jewish, and that way you didn't have to pay back (unless they decided to convert, and that's what Inquisition was set for, to make their life hard if they posed a problem). And people didn't like jews anyway.
This ideology evolved naturally to what Charles I/V intended to do, to stablish a world empire under his rule.
The expulsion of the moriscos only had anything to do with the jewish expulsion as an echo. The direct cause was the rebellions that morisco peasants were causing.
So, it had more to do with the individual personality of Isabel and Fernando, who created this ideology, than with the frame of the Reconquista.