1492
The expulsion of Spanish Jews begins
On January 6, 1492 the Reconquista came to an end. With the fall of Granada, the last Muslim stronghold in Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile had completed the 700-year battle to drive Islam from the Iberian peninsula. On March 31 of the same year a new kind of religious purification began — the two rulers issued the Alhambra Decree which forced the country’s Jews to choose between conversion to Christianity within four months or penniless expulsion. Most Spanish Jews chose to leave. Some fled to Portugal (though they were expelled from that country too before long) and some to North Africa. The Ottoman emperor Bayezid II sent ships to transport Jews and resettle them in his domain, mocking the Spanish king as one “who has impoverished his own country and enriched mine!” The pope and a number of Italian city states also welcomed Jews to their territories. Bayezid’s assessment of the economic impact of the Spanish actions was correct: migrating Jews took valuable skills and connections with them to their new homes while the Spanish economy, despite the massive influx of gold and silver from the New World, stagnated.
Those Jews who chose to convert were never fully trusted by the Spanish authorities who feared (probably correctly) that their conversions were insincere and that these “New Christians” or “Marranos” were secret Judaizers. The Spanish Inquisition troubled the converso families for centuries as religious anti-Semitism morphed into racism. Anyone who could not prove that their ancestors had not married into a once-Jewish line were deemed to lack “purity of blood” and were kept from influence and high office. In the sixteenth century Spanish authorities turned on their Muslim subjects and on converts from Islam as well, driving them into exile or bloody rebellion.
Recently, the Catholic Church and the Spanish government have apologized to the descendants of these persecuted Jews. Spain has offered them automatic Spanish nationality without the requirement of residence in Spain.