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A factor that undoubdetly contributed to tension, over and above anti-converso feeling, was the conversos' own sense of separate identity. Already a powerful minority by the mid-fifteenth century, conversos were secure of their social position and proud to be both Christians and of Jewish descent.

They did not, as is sometimes thought, attemt to disguise their origins. They were, as many of their own writers admit clearly, a nation. They had their own identity, and took pride in it. Andres Bernaldez reported that 'they entertained the arrogant claim that there was no better people in the world than they'.

Alonso de Palencia reported complaints by Old Christians that the conversos acted as 'the nation apart, and nowhere would they agree to act together with the Old Christians; indeed, as though they were people of totally opposed ideas, they openly and brazenly favored whatever was contrary to the Old Christians ...'

Implicit in the converso attitude was the claim that they were even better than Old Christians, because together with Christian faith they combined direct descent from the lineage (linaje) of Christ. It was said that Alonso de Cartagena when he recited the Hail Mary used to end with the words, 'Holy Mary, Mother of God and my blood-relative, pray for us'.

© "The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision"
by Henry Kamen. Page 42.

The great danger, the inquisitor went on, was that the greater part of the population of Spain would soon be branded as impure, and the only remaining guarantee of Old Christian blood would be one's plebeian origin.

Ibid. pg 250.

No new universities were founded in Castile between 1620 and the nineteenth century. As in all periods of economic recession, preference went to 'useful' rather than speculative studies ...

Ibid. pg 318 [italics mine, vs]  ¶ 11:12 PM