(10 Jun 2015) Spanish lawmakers on Thursday are due to approve a law that potentially allows hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, of Sephardic Jews around the world a shot at citizenship.
When Spain announced in 2013 it would atone for the Inquisition by granting citizenship to people who can prove lineage from exiled Jews, many were elated.
Then came a long wait, as the law took two years to wind its way through Parliament.
Many would-be applicants thought the Spanish law would carry few requirements beyond thorough vetting of ancestry.
That’s the case with the Portuguese law, which was proposed after Spain’s but went into effect on 1 March.
But Spanish lawmakers ended up adding amendments, making the process for Sephardic Jews similar to that faced by permanent residents seeking citizenship.
The hurdles are significant: Sephardic applicants must learn and be tested in basic Spanish if they don’t speak one of several Jewish languages rooted in Spanish.
They also must pass a current events and culture test about Spain.
And they have to 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.
Angel Salvador, a Sephardic Jew from Argentina is not worried by the complicated process.
“We see it as a normal question for a law that allows people to return. This is not an immigration law, this is a law to come home,” he said.
For Alicia Siso, a Sephardic Jew from Morocco, the application requirements are also not too stringent.
“I think it is right that you can speak the language, that you have connection with Spanish culture,” she said.
But Jose Caro, who can trace his roots to Joseph Ben Efraim Caro, a revered Jewish scholar believed to have fled the country in 1492, feels differently.
As a native of Chile, Caro speaks fluent Spanish and studied Spanish culture and history in Argentina, where he was raised.
But the 58-year-old insurance broker, has decided not to apply because he sees the conditions Spain has imposed as an affront to his family and its history of expulsion and persecution.
Lawyer Luis Portero said there have been complaints from people saying things are a lot easier in Portugal than in Spain but he agrees the time is justified because the law is being carefully thought through.
Caro, who heads a group representing immigrants to Israel from Latin America, won’t apply for Portuguese citizenship because he considers his ancestors’ stay there “just a stop” in their exile from Spain, their ancestral land.
Virtually all of Portugal’s Jews fled to the country from Spain.
The Jews who ended up in Portugal were only there five years until they, too, were ordered to convert or leave in 1497.
Since the law came into force in Portugal on the 1st of March, five requests have been confirmed by the Government.
None has been yet approved.
The Israeli Community of Lisbon is one of the vetting organisations chosen by the Portuguese Government, granting applicants with a certificate of their Sephardic ancestry, the key element to request for citizenship.
Esther Mucznik, from the Israeli Community of Lisbon, says that the Portuguese law is trying to make amends.
“The truth is that whilst it is not possible to erase the past, it is possible to build a new history,” she says, highlighting that because it is based on a right, there are no time limitations to request citizenship.
In Spain, conversely, once the law is in effect, applicants will have a three-year window to seek citizenship.
There are no reliable estimates of how many people might be eligible.

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