NEWS - PORTUGAL and SPAIN
PORTUGAL
13 JULY 2013
500 years after the expulsion of its community,
Lisbon’s new legislation corrects
a moral wrong,
Led by Ribeiro e Castro, correcting the injustice meant spearheading a bill to naturalize
the Jewish descendants of expelled Jews, a measure that unanimously passed the Portuguese
parliament in April and went on the books last week, making Portugal the only country
besides Israel with a Jewish law of return.
_____________________
JULY 2012
Trancoso a tiny Portuguese village in Northern Portugal
inaugurates the state-of-the-art
Isaac Cardoso Center for Jewish Interpretation,
and the new synagogue
called Beit
Mayim Hayim – “the House of Living Waters.”
_____________________
MARCH 2012
Captain Barros Basto
IS NOW TRULY THE ‘PORTUGUESE DREYFUS’
A UNANIMOUS
DECISION
OF THE PORTUGUESE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
DECLARED HIM INNOCENT
OF ALL CHARGES
BROUGHT AGAINST HIM IN 1937
___________________________________________
SPAIN
Sephardic Jews
invited back to Spain after 500 years
(Gerry Hadden - BBC News Magazine 6 March 2013)
More than 500 years ago, tens of thousands of Jews fled Spain because of persecution.
Now their descendants are being invited to return.
Before the infamous Spanish Inquisition of the 15th Century, some 300,000 Jews lived
in Spain. It was one of the largest communities of Jews in the world.
Today, there are about 40,000 or 50,000 - but that number could be about to swell
dramatically.
In November, Spain's justice minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon announced a plan to
give descendants of Spain's original Jewish community - known as Sephardic Jews -
a fast-track to a Spanish passport and Spanish citizenship.
"In the long journey Spain has undertaken to rediscover a part of itself, few occasions
are as moving as today," he said.
Anyone who could prove their Spanish Jewish origins, he said, would be given Spanish
nationality.
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