Spain’s lower house of parliament gave final approval Thursday to a law setting a citizenship path for descendants of Jews forced to flee the country after all Jews were told in 1492 to convert, go into exile or risk being burned at the stake.
Lawmakers approved it in positive votes to a series of amendments, so there was no single vote tally.
The law allows Sephardic Jews to start applying for Spanish citizenship in October, granting them a three-year window to seek a Spanish passport complete with the right to work and live anywhere in the 28-nation European Union.
“Today begins a new stage in the history of relations between Spain and the Jewish world,” the Spanish Federation of Jewish Communities said in a statement. “A new period of reunion, dialogue and harmony re-integrating a branch of the nation that was unjustly torn off in its day.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Emmanuel Nahshon, praised Spain following the votes for finishing “its historic duty to the descendants of Jews expelled from Spain.”
Spain’s vote followed Portugal’s March approval of a similar citizenship plan for Sephardic Jews whose ancestors were forced to leave that country.
Many would-be applicants thought the Spanish law in the works since 2013 would carry few requirements beyond thorough vetting of applicant ancestry by Jewish organizations. That’s the case with the Portuguese law, which was proposed after Spain’s but went into effect in March 1.
But Spanish lawmakers ended up drafting a citizenship process for Sephardic Jews similar to that faced by permanent residents seeking Spanish citizenship.
The hurdles are significant: Sephardic applicants must learn and be tested in basic Spanish and must also pass a current events and culture test about Spain.
And they must establish a modern-day link to Spain, which can be as simple as donating to a Spanish charity or as expensive as buying Spanish property.
The Spanish Jewish federation has received more than 5,000 requests for information about the Spanish law. No one knows how many people might be eligible, though some estimates run into the millions.
(AP)
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One Response
1. A major attraction of this is that with Spanish citizenship, one gains access to the entire European Union under their “Freedom of movement” policy.
2. While frum Jews are not likely to be thinking about moving to Europe due to rising anti-Semitism, that doesn’t affect secular and assimilated Jew to the same extent, if at all.
3. This might prove attractive for some secular post-zionist Jews in Israel who are desperate to move to a secular place such as Europe, and to anyone in South America of Sefardi descent.