Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Sephardic Jews Won’t Face ‘Strict’ Spanish Citizenship Rules, Justice Minister Says

When Spain finally offers citizenship to Sephardic Jews, will you qualify?

According to Spain’s Justice Minister, who spoke at the American Jewish Committee’s offices in New York on March 19, the requirements to prove Sephardic descent will be loose.

“The government is not looking to be strict,” said Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, speaking with the Forward after delivering his official remarks at the AJC luncheon.

Gallardón and another minister first announced their plan to offer citizenship to the descendants of Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 at a press conference in Madrid in 2012. The Forward published an essay on the plan in January 2014; Spain’s cabinet approved the bill two weeks later. The law still must be voted on by Spain’s parliament.

The proposal is, apparently, big news in Spain: reporters from at least eight Spanish media outlets attended the AJC lunch, including representatives from four television stations and two radio stations. Gallardón spoke in Spanish in front of a crowd made up of AJC officials and diplomats. His speech ranged widely over the history of Jews in New York, the impact on Spain of the expulsion of the Jews, and the rebuilding of Spain’s relationship with Jews, which he traced to a friendly encounter between Sephardic Jews and Spanish troops in Morocco in 1859.

Gallardón said that it was too early to say how many Sephardic Jews the government expected to take advantage of the citizenship law if it passes, but that he didn’t expect many Sephardic Jews to actually move to Spain.

“This law has no political reasons behind it,” he insisted. “It doesn’t have any economic goals or consequences.”

Asked after the speech about how Spain will decide who does and doesn’t qualify as a Sephardic Jew, Gallardón described a number of measures laid out in the draft bill. The surnames of applicants will be examined, and they will be asked to submit certifications from local rabbis or Jewish communal authorities.

The text of the draft bill, however, leaves unanswered questions about how strong the Sephardic ties of a qualified applicant must be. When asked about one example of a marginal case — the Syrian Jewish community, many of whom are not descended from Jews expelled from Spain, but who do consider themselves Sephardic — Galladrón said that his government’s intention was not to be overly strict.

“We are opening the door,” Gallardón said.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

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.