Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Spain And Portugal Naturalize Nearly 5,000 Sephardic Jews

(JTA) — Nearly 5,000 people have become citizens of Spain or Portugal following the passing of laws in both countries on the naturalization of descendants of Sephardic Jews.

In Portugal, where a procedure for naturalization under the law went into effect last year, 292 applicants for naturalization have been approved, Catarina Madeira, a spokeswoman for the Portuguese Justice Ministry, told JTA on Wednesday.

Spain has naturalized 4,538 applicants for citizenship by Sephardim since the law went into effect last year. However, only three applicants were granted citizenship based on the actual law, the ABC daily reported Sunday. Others were naturalized by a royal decree and not through the non-discretionary procedure devised for the law.

According to ABC, the Spanish government in effect blocked the nondiscretionary procedure to avoid mass immigration by an estimated 30 million non-Jewish descendants of Sephardim eligible under the law.

In both countries, the passing of the laws of return for Sephardim was described as an attempt to atone for the state and church-led mass expulsion, dispossession, torture and forced conversion into Christianity of Jews during the Inquisition — a period that began in the 15th century and ended with the disappearance and dispersion of what used to be one of the world’s largest Jewish communities. In both countries, the legislation followed an economic recession that led to high unemployment and vigorous attempts by Lisbon and Madrid to attract wealthy investors, residents and tourists.

Portuguese authorities have approved only 7.5 percent of the 3,838 applications filed since March 2015, Madeira said. A bureaucratic block that had caused delays in the naturalization process was removed in February, she added.

“The difference between the applications approved and those pending owes to the fact that each request for naturalization requires rigorous evaluation of documents,” Madeira said.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.