Spain Scraps Language Test For Jewish Law Of Return
(JTA) — Spanish authorities dispensed with language and culture tests for elderly applicants for citizenship under the country’s law of return for Sephardi Jews.
The Spanish justice ministry decided to offer the dispensation from tests on the Spanish language and heritage, which used to be necessary for all applicants for citizenship under the 2013 law, after it emerged that it effectively barred hundreds of elderly Turkish Jews from exercising their right to a Spanish passport, El Pais reported last week.
Spain has naturalized 4,919 applicants for citizenship by Sephardim since the law went into effect last year, according to the daily. However, only 387 applicants were granted citizenship based on the actual law. Others were naturalized by a royal decree and not through the non-discretionary procedure devised for the law.
The tests applicants were required to pass need to be taken in Spain, a complicating factor.
Karen Gerson Sharon of the Sephardic Center of Istanbul said the dispensation was “very welcome.”
The governments of both Spain and Portugal passed the laws as a symbolic rectification for the murder, mass deportations and forced conversions to Christianity of their Jews during the 15th and 16th centuries, during what came to be known the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30