Centuries after the Spanish Inquisition almost obliterated the Sephardic community in Spain, the country is finally coming to grips with its past, by passing a law to reinstate citizenship for those Sephardic Jews forced in exile by the Inquisition Tribunal.
The new law would allow anyone who is Sephardic to be reinstated as citizen by descendancy as long as they can prove they are indeed related to those jews ousted during the Inquisition times.
The charter previously decreed that anyone trying to claim citizenship by descendancy had to wait two years in residency before being granted the right. The new law abolished the provision, making it an automatic approval for those with the proper documentation.
The procedure, according to Gallardon, is aimed at "reuniting those who have been unjustly deprived of their nationality and have recreated in their hearts a Spain that they never resigned themselves to losing and that from now on is as much theirs as it is ours, under the law."
Gallardon himself, has ancestry who were persecuted by the Nazis, making him particulalry aware of the problem. He too, is connected to the Sephardic community that was lost to the Inquisition.
Sephardic Jews are Jews that inhabited the Sefarad region in Spain.
They also have their own dialect, called Judeoespanol, or Ladino. As many as 250,000 people speak it.
Once approved, under the new law, Jews will be able to register as citizens immediately after they pledge allegiance to the king of Spain and the constitution.
Source : Jerusalem post 5.20.13
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