Rafael Cortés de Alfonso was a shopkeeper who had been reconciled by the Inquisition. In other words, he was one of them. In December 1686, at the request of the Jesuit Sebastián Sabater and on the orders of inquisitor Nicolás Rodríguez Fermosino, he began writing reports on his neighbors. He numbered and dated them: «Paper No. 4», «Paper No. 5».
The fourth paper is a lesson in method. He called at the house of another Rafael Cortés. The wife came out and said her husband was not home. But on the chair at the top of the stairs he saw «the cloak and hat and collar». He saw a son sitting at the table with no tablecloth, and the mother setting aside a little bread for the boy. The door stayed shut all day. The spy's conclusion: «they were fasting».
There was no need to see anyone pray. What was missing was enough: a tablecloth, a meal, an open door.
The spy never saw what his work set in motion. When the tribunal formally collected his papers, on 26 September 1687, he had been dead for fifteen days. The arrests began five months later.
