MADRID, (Reuters) – The Spanish government approved a law yesterday allowing descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled from the country in 1492 to seek Spanish nationality without giving up their current citizenship.
Spain’s Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon said Spain owed the Sephardic community a debt for spreading the Spanish language and culture around the world. The word Sephardic comes from Sefarad, or Spain in Hebrew.
“The law we’ve passed today has a deep historic meaning: not only because it concerns events in our past of which we should not be proud, like the decree to expel the Jews in 1492, but because it reflects the reality of Spain as an open and plural society,” said Gallardon.
Around 300,000 Jews lived in Spain before the ‘Reyes Catolicos’, Catholic monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand, ordered Jews and Muslims to convert to the Catholic faith or leave the country.
The old Jewish quarters in medieval Spanish cities such as Cordoba and Toledo, where Jews lived among Christians and Muslims before the Catholic victory, making rich contributions to science, music and literature, now attract thousands of tourists every year.
The law potentially allows an estimated 3.5 million residents of countries where many Sephardic Jews eventually settled, such as Israel, France, the United States, Turkey, Mexico, Argentina and Chile, to apply for Spanish nationality.
