Wednesday, October 02, 2019
132,000 descendants of expelled Jews apply for Spanish citizenship
More than 132,000 descendants of the Jews expelled from Spain in the late 15th century have applied for Spanish citizenship under a law intended to make amends for the mass exile.
The law, introduced four years ago, was designed to atone for the "historical wrong" that saw the country's Jewish community expelled, forced to convert to Catholicism or burned at the stake.
After being extended for a year, the law lapsed on 1 October. According to the justice ministry, 132,226 people of Sephardic descent applied for Spanish citizenship before the deadline, with a huge rise in applications in the past month.
"By 31 August, 60,226 applications had been received, but in September alone, almost 72,000 were received, most of them from citizens in Latin American countries, mainly Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela," the ministry said in a statement.
The Spanish government had initially estimated that around 90,000 people would seek citizenship, but acknowledged that it was hard to know just how many people would meet the criteria.
Spain's Federation of Jewish Communities (FCJE), which certifies applications, said it had received more than 30,000 from Mexico, 26,000 from Colombia, 14,000 from Venezuela, 7,000 from Argentina, 5,400 from the US and 4,900 from Israel.
It has also dealt with applications from Panama, Ecuador, Brazil, Turkey, France, the UK, Serbia and Montenegro, Peru, Chile, Morocco and Afghanistan.
Although the process does not require applicants to be practising Jews or to be resident in Spain, it is long, complicated and expensive.
As well as taking tests in Spanish language and culture, applicants needed to prove their Sephardic heritage, establish or prove a special connection with Spain, and then pay a designated notary to certify their documents.
Isaac Querub, the president of the FCJE, said the law had finally achieved its aims.
"Thousands of Sephardic Jews from all over the world have recovered their Spanish nationality and thousands more are in the process of doing so," he said.
"Spain has used a long-lasting legal act to close a historical wound. Sephardic Jews are no longer 'the Jews without a homeland'. Spain came to miss them and the Sephardic Jews never forgot Spain."
A similar law was approved in Portugal in 2015 to atone for the expulsions from that part of the Iberian peninsula.
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