Spain will extend the citizenship deadline for descendants of Spanish Jews (Sephardim) who were expelled from the country in 1492 by one year to help those who could not file requests on time due to the coronavirus outbreak, the Star Tribune reported on Thursday.
The new deadline was set to September 2021 and only those who already began the process will benefit from the extension. The process was closed in October 2019.
Since the law offering Spanish citizenship to Jewish descendants of those expelled in 1492 was passed in 2015, 132,000 persons requested to obtain it. They are required to present evidence they are indeed the descendants of those expelled in 1492, prove they are familiar with the Spanish constitution and current culture, and appear in Spain in front of a notary.Such a request cannot be done now when there are very few flights because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Spain was not alone in offering this olive branch to Jews. Portugal passed a similar law in 2015 but now might limit the extent of it to Jewish people who live in the country for two years before requesting to be made citizens.
The expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula was seen as a terrible calamity by the Jews at the time and had a variety of influences on Jewish and non-Jews relations.It gave birth to the hidden Jews of Spain, people who converted to Christianity openly to maintain their lives in Spain but secretly remained Jewish. It led Portuguese Jews to seek a new home in the more tolerant Protestant nations of the Dutch Republic and England, eventually producing Baruch Spinoza.It also enabled the unusual historical character of Samuel Pallache, who chose to become a pirate in the service of Morocco and to pillage Spanish ships in particular. The name Sephardim is derived from the word "Spain" in Hebrew, Sepharad, and is the general term for many Jews from Turkey, north Africa, and numerous Arab nations. All of these countries were open to accept Jewish refugees from Spain at the time and already had established Jewish communities living in them. European Jews are called Ashkenazim, which is derived from the lands now known as Germany and Poland. Sephardim Jews largely kept using Ladino, a language which is composed of Hebrew and Spanish, and their own traditions. It is important to notice that in one country, such as Egypt, one could find Arabic speaking Jews who followed Egyptian Jewish customs as well as Sephardim Jews who spoke Ladino and kept their own customs, while both groups will be called Mizrhai Jews in Israel, meaning Oriental Jews, they are not at all the same.