Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

First 21 Sephardic Jews Move Towards Portugal Citizenship

The government of Portugal published its procedure for handling applications for citizenship based on the country’s law of return for descendants of Sephardic Jews.

The new procedure, effective as of Sunday, is based on legislation passed in 2013 entitling the descendants of Sephardic Jews to the Portuguese nationality deprived of them due to religious and racist persecution as of 1492, the year that is widely accepted as the beginning of the Inquisition.

It forced hundreds of thousands of Jews to emigrate under duress.

“The following document will allow the realization of the right of return to Jewish Sephardic descendants of Portuguese origin who desire, through acquiring Portuguese nationality by naturalization, to integrate into the national community with all the inherent rights and obligation this entails,” reads the new decree of law, which was published Monday.

Spain has initiated similar legislation for similar reasons but its Congress has yet to vote on any bill.

Titled “Concession on Portuguese Nationality by Naturalization to Descendants of Sephardic Jews,” the new regulation stipulates that applicants must present a document issued by a Portugal-based Portuguese community attesting to their Portuguese Sephardic ancestry. The country has two officially recognized Jewish communities, Lisbon and Porto.

In addition, applicants must prove other personal documents through a notary, including proof that they have no criminal record in their country of origin or residence.

The Jewish Community of Porto, which has published an English-language text for prospective applicants on its website, already has approved 21 applications, according to Michael Rothwell, who coordinates issues connected to citizenship for the community. Among the first applicants approved was Alfonso Paredes and his family from Panama, Rothwell said in a statement.

Other applicants include citizens of Turkey, Israel, the United States and some European countries.

“Israel is for Jews the land of return but in Europe, the best safe harbor for Jews is Portugal,” Rothwell said.

“Portugal is perhaps the only country in Europe where one can safely walk anywhere at any time while wearing a kippah,” a spokesman for the Porto Jewish community added in a statement.

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.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  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.