THE NEW YORK TIMES: In 2015, Spain said it would give citizenship to the descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled during the Spanish Inquisition. Then rejections started pouring in this summer.
MADRID — María Sánchez, a retired mental health therapist in Albuquerque, spent the past four decades tracing her Jewish ancestry from Spain. She created a vast genealogical chart going back nearly 1,100 years, which included three ancestors who were tried in the Spanish Inquisition. Her findings even led her to join a synagogue in the 1980s and to become a practicing Jew.
So when Spain’s government said in 2015 that it would grant citizenship to people of Sephardic Jewish descent — a program publicized as reparations for the expulsion of Jews that began in 1492 — Ms. Sánchez applied. She hired an immigration lawyer, obtained a certificate from her synagogue and flew to Spain to present her genealogy chart to a notary.
Then, in May, she received a rejection letter.
“It felt like a punch in the gut,” said Ms. Sánchez, 60, who was told she had not proved that she was a Sephardic Jew. “You kicked my ancestors out, now you’re doing this again.” » | Nicholas Casey | Saturday, July 24, 2021
