Spain has promised citizenship to Sephardic Jews. now they feel betrayed.

2021-07-24 11:56:22

Spain has promised citizenship to Sephardic Jews. Now they feel betrayed. In 2015 Spain announced it would grant citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews deported during the Spanish Inquisition. Then the rejections started pouring in this summer. MADRID – Maria Sanchez, mental health therapist at retirement in Albuquerque,has spent the past four decades tracing its Jewish origins from Spain. She created an extensive genealogical chart dating back almost 1,100 years, which included three ancestors who were tried during the Spanish Inquisition. Her discoveries even led her to join a synagogue in the 1980s and become a practicing Jew. So when the Spanish government declared in 2015 that It would grant citizenship to people of Sephardic Jewish descent – a program billed as reparations for the expulsion of Jews that began in 1492 – Ms. Sanchez applied. She hired an immigration lawyer, obtained a certificate from her synagogue, and flew to Spain to present her genealogical chart to a notary. In May she received a rejection letter. ” It was like a punch in the stomach “, sa id Ms.Sanchez, 60, who was told she had not proven to be a Sephardic Jew. “You chased away my ancestors, now you are starting over. ” Image Maria Sanchez, this week at her home in Albuquerque, with the documents she had gathered for her repair request. Credit … Sharon Chischilly for The Hfrance.fr Statistics of Spain and interviews of frustrated Plaintiffs reveal a wave of more than 3,000 rejections in recent months, raising questions about the country”s seriousness about its promise of reparations to correct one of the darkest chapters in its history, the Inquisition. Before this year, only one person had been transformed. declining, the government sa id. Some 34,000 were accepted. At least 17,000 other people received no answer, according to government statistics. Many of them have waited years and spent thousands of dollars on attorney fees and travel to Spain to file documents. On don”t know why the wave of rejections has happened now. The Spanish government sa id it was simply trying to clear a backlog of cases. But lawyers representing the applicants say they believe officials have changed their minds about the program, which officially stopped taking applications in 2019. For the candidates, this left a feeling of bewilderment and betrayal. Image A street in the Former Jewish Quarter of Segovia The expulsion of Jews from Spain began in 1492 when the country”s rulers issued an ultimatum to the Spanish Jewish community: convert to Catholicism or leave. Credit … Emilio Parra Doiztua for Hfrance.fr Some saw citizenship as a way to make peace with the persecution of their ancestors by forming a bond with their ancestral land. had more immediate concerns, seeing a Spanish passport as the best hope for escaping dire situations in their own country. “For Venezuelans, this “was a lifeline,” sa id Marcos Tulio Cabrera, founder of the Association of Hispano-Venezuelans of Sephardic origin, whose family of nine received four refusals this month, the others still awaiting a decision. Mr Cabrera, who lives in Valencia, Venezuela, a city crippled by economic instability and murderous gangs, sa id he spent nearly $ 53,000 to file the claims, depleting much of the savings family. The rejections angered officials in Washington, including Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez, Democrat of New Mexico, who sa id she raised the issue with both the White House and the State Department after receiving complaints from candidates in his district. “Their refusal is worse that if they hadn”t offered citizenship in the first place, “Fernandez sa id of Spain. “This is an example of howwhich you do not make repairs. ” In a statement, the Spanish Ministry of Justice, which is in charge of the claims, sa id it had did his best to follow Spanish law and it was natural that he had to refuse many cases. Image Arnulfo Ramirez, professor emeritus of linguistics at Louisiana Stat The university which has traced his family to 1580, learned in July that his candidacy had been rejected. Credit … Emilio Parra Doiztua for Hfrance.fr Those who have fulfilled the conditions “are welcome again in their country, but likewise those who do not meet the conditions will seetheir application rejected as they would be in any other process. ” The program began in 2015, when Spain”s Parliament Unanimously approved a law that would grant citizenship to anyone who could prove they had a single Jewish ancestor who had been expelled during the Inquisition. Applicants do not need to “be Jewish, the government sa id, and were not required to renounce their current citizenship, but would be required to prove that they could speak Spanish and pass a citizenship test. “This law says a lot about what we were in the past, who we are today and what we want to continue to be in the future – a Spain open, at the time . The Spain was once home to one of the most prosperous Jewish communities in Europe, which for centuries produced great poets, historians and philosophers. Sephardic or Sephardic Jews, originally from communities on the Iberian Peninsula, are one of the two Image An ancient Jewish cemetery carved into the rock in Segovia. Credit … Emilio Parra Doiz killed for Hfrance.fr In 1492, the Spanish rulers, urged by the Catholic ChurchRoman, issued an ultimatum to the Spanish Jewish community: convert to Catholicism or leave. Those who left fled to the Middle East , in the Caribbean and in parts of what would become the United States. Sephardic Jews, as they became known, kept their traditions in some lands and hid them in others, passing them on to generations who were brought up as Catholics. It was a story that Arnulfo Ramirez, professor emeritus of linguistics at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, had long suspected his family was a part of. His paternal grandfather and father were circumcised, although neither could explain why, he sa id. Some family members had an indifferent attitude towards the Catholic Church. Mr. Ramireztraced his surnames to a passenger manifesto from a ship of descendants of Spanish Jews that left Seville in 1580. He presented his findings to the Or VeShalom Synagogue in Atlanta, which presented him with a certificate attesting to his ancestry Jewish woman he made for an appointment with a notary in Spain. Image A list of the Jewish Segovies who lived in the city before the expulsion in 1492 is displayed at the Jewish Museum in Segovia. Credit … Emilio Parra Doiztua for Hfrance.fr Mr. Ramirez thought he had a good citizenship record. The professor was made an officer of the Order of Isabella the Catholic, a Spanish decoration that includesknights and commanders, in the 1990s for his work on Spanish linguistics. But he was wrong: at the beginning of July, he learned that he and his daughter, who practices Judaism, had been rejected. Cesar David Ciriano, an immigration lawyer in the Spanish city of Zaragoza, sa id that until this year it was almost unheard of for applications to be rejected after being submitted to the government. Indeed, Spanish notaries – like this one visited by Mr Ramirez – acted as custodians, approving certificates of Jewish heritage, genealogical chart and other documents from an applicant, before an application was formally submitted. Government officials were not allowed to overturn the notary”s decision, Ciriano sa id. However, this year, officials suddenly started questioning the notary”s approvals, he sa id. “This is the first time that I have seen such illegal behavior on the part of the government, ” Mr. Ciriano sa id. Image The old Jewish quarter of Segovia. In 2015, the Spanish Parliament unanimously approved a law that would grant citizenship to anyone who can prove they had a single Jewish ancestor who was expelled during the Inquisition. Credit … Emilio Parra Doiztua for Hfrance.fr The Spanish government in its statement sa id it followed the law in enforcing citizenship decisions. Ms. Sa nchez, the New Mexico therapist who was turned down in May, has a pending lawsuit against the Spanish government to appeal her case. She checks off ancestor names such as Bartolome Romero, a Spaniard of Jewish descent who settled in New Mexico in the 1500s and who has been her great-grandfather for nine generations. Her family tree, over 250 pages long, ends with an ancestor named Ancar III, who died in 902. But she sa id the rejection by the government gave its break. “I must have sat for a minute and thought, “Well, who am I then?” “She sa id.” Where is my past? But I have a strong Sephardic origin. I can say that I am Jewish. It “s me. ” Jose Bautista contributed to the report.