Portugal to grant citizenship to descendants of persecuted Jews

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Legal change means Sephardic Jews, whose ancestors were expelled in the 15th century, can apply for dual nationality
The Portuguese parliament in Lisbon
The Portuguese parliament in Lisbon. Photograph: Armando Franca/AP

Portugal is to introduce a law granting citizenship rights to the descendants of Jews it persecuted 500 years ago, following Spain’s adoption of similar legislation last year.

Cabinet spokesman Luís Marques Guedes said changes to the nationality law would provide dual citizenship rights for Sephardic Jews, the term commonly used for those who once lived in the Iberian peninsula.

The rights will apply to those who can demonstrate a “traditional connection” to Portuguese Sephardic Jews, such as through “family names, family language and direct or collateral ancestry”.

Applicants, who will not need to travel to Portugal, will be vetted by Portuguese Jewish community institutions as well as by government agencies in a procedure expected to take four months. Applicants will have to say whether they have a criminal record.

The Portuguese parliament unanimously endorsed the law in 2013. Since then, the government has been drawing up the legal details and establishing administrative procedures. The effective date of the law will be announced when the legislation is published soon in the country’s official gazette.

Portuguese monarchs, eager for tax revenue and Jewish talent that helped the country become one of Europe’s wealthiest nations during the Age of Expansion in the 1400s, had protected their thriving Sephardic community.

After Spain drove out the Jews in 1492, 80,000 of them crossed the border into Portugal, historians estimate. King Joao II charged the fleeing Sephardic Jews a tax to shelter in Portugal. He promised to provide them with ships so they could go to other countries, but later changed his mind.

In 1496, his successor, King Manuel I, eager to find favour with Spain’s powerful Catholic rulers, Ferdinand and Isabella, and to marry their daughter Isabella of Aragon, gave the Jews 10 months to convert or leave. When they opted to leave, Manuel issued a decree prohibiting their departure and forcing them to embrace Roman Catholicism as “New Christians”.

The New Christians adopted new names, inter-married and even ate pork in public to prove their devotion to their new faith. Some Jews, though, kept their traditions alive, secretly observing the sabbath at home then going to church on Sunday. They circumcised their sons and quietly observed Yom Kippur, calling it in Portuguese the dia puro, or pure day.

Though officially accepted, the New Christians were at the mercy of popular prejudice. In the Easter massacre of Jewish converts in 1506 in Lisbon, more than 2,000 Jews are believed to have been murdered.

Tens of thousands of Jews were persecuted, tortured and burned at the stake during the Portuguese Inquisition, established in 1536.

In 1988, the then president Mário Soares met members of Portugal’s Jewish community and formally apologised for the Inquisition. In 2000, the leader of Portugal’s Roman Catholics issued a public apology for the suffering imposed by the Catholic church and a monument to the dead was erected in 2008 outside the São Domingos church where the Easter massacre began.