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Tag: Spain

Gaining Spanish citizenship

Gaining Spanish citizenship

Michelle Valenzuela, centre, along with her brother, Pedro de Jesus Valenzuela Mora, and mother, Diana Mora. (photo from Michelle Valenzuela)

Almost 500 years after her Sephardi ancestors were forced out of Spain, Michelle Valenzuela is on a path back.

The 28-year-old artist and art teacher from Colombia is currently living and studying in Vancouver as the Spanish government finishes processing her citizenship application along with one from her brother. Their mother is pursuing a similar process with Portugal after both countries opened their doors to the descendants of Sephardi Jews persecuted during the Inquisition.

Growing up in a deeply Catholic family, Valenzuela had no inkling of a Jewish heritage until a cousin who works at the Colombian Academy of Genealogy told them what he had discovered: their family descended from Samuel Levi Abulafia, who had adopted the Christianized name of Cristobal Gomez de Castro before being expelled from Spain in 1570. He had been found guilty of sacrilege, bigamy, heretical ideas and promoting Judaism.

“We found out the Jewish background of our family story,” Valenzuela told the Independent. “For me, it was shocking. I don’t have a good relationship with Catholicism so I always felt like the black sheep of the family. It was an explanation for myself that our origins weren’t that Christian.

“There’s something particular about my mother’s family, the whole personality of the family, which is really different from other cultures in Colombia.”

Her grandmother, for instance, started a successful business that still exists, unusual at a time when most Latin American women were expected to stay home and care for children.

Although her cousin had earlier discovered the Jewish origins, he didn’t tell the rest of the family until after Spain passed legislation in 2015 to offer citizenship to members of the Sephardi diaspora.

“I think it’s related with the fact that the family became really Catholic and proud of being Catholic. One of his brothers is a priest,” explained Valenzuela.

Jews who came to Colombia hundreds of years ago had to hide their faith because the colonies of Spain carried out their own inquisitions.

As Sephardi people spread to all corners of the earth, the largest communities were established in Israel and Turkey, followed by the colonial holdings of Spain and Portugal in the New World. The expulsion of Jews followed Spain’s campaign to also rid the country of followers of Islam, known as Moors.

The 2015 law is aimed at historical redress for the descendants of about 160,000 Jews expelled on the 1492 orders of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. About 100 years later, another 300,000 Jews who had converted to Catholicism, but nonetheless incurred the wrath of Spanish authorities, were also expelled – including Valenzuela’s ancestor.

Remarkably, documents from the hearings that forced people into exile are accessible online due to digitization of the Catholic Church’s records.

Now, her parents face the knowledge that the church they serve – her mother as a Bible teacher and her father as a deacon in training – is the same one that forced her ancestors to convert or flee.

“I tried to ask [my mother] about her thoughts about her family being Jewish and I think she’s not able to confront it,” Valenzuela said. “Her answers are vague, evasive. I think she’s surprised as well with her Jewish roots, but she has always referred to the Jewish people as older brothers to the Christians.”

Accountant to the king

photo - A bust of Samuel ben Meir Ha-Levi Abulafia in Toledo, Spain, near the synagogue he founded in the 14th century
A bust of Samuel ben Meir Ha-Levi Abulafia in Toledo, Spain, near the synagogue he founded in the 14th century. (photo from Michelle Valenzuela)

Research into the family’s roots in Spain and Portugal also led to a much more famous Samuel Levi Abulafia, a 14th-century advisor and treasurer to Pedro I, the king of Castile and Léon.

Abulafia was prominent between about 1320 and 1360, first as an aide to Portuguese nobility and ultimately as a wealthy and powerful official in Toledo, where Abulafia commissioned construction of El Transito Synagogue on a street now bearing his name and statue. His nearby former palace in the city’s Jewish Quarter now houses a museum of El Greco’s paintings.

Also known as Samuel ben Meir Ha-Levi Abulafia, he fell out of favour with the king as anti-Jewish sentiment grew in the Late Middle Ages. Accused of disloyalty to the king, he was imprisoned, tortured and killed in 1360 and his assets seized by the crown.

The synagogue was converted to a Catholic Church and declared a national monument in 1877. It has since been restored as a synagogue and now includes a Sephardi museum.

Applying for citizenship

The process to gain citizenship is long and costly, requiring money and persistence to complete. Even now, two years after the deadline for applications closed in Spain, Valenzuela and her brother are waiting for final citizenship documents to arrive.

photo - Genealogy prepared for Michelle Valenzuela for her application for Spanish citizenship. It dates back to a man exiled from Spain in 1570 for being Jewish despite his adoption of a Catholic name, Gomez de Castro
Genealogy prepared for Michelle Valenzuela for her application for Spanish citizenship. It dates back to a man exiled from Spain in 1570 for being Jewish despite his adoption of a Catholic name, Gomez de Castro. (photo from Michelle Valenzuela)

Files received by the 2019 Spanish deadline are still being reviewed, while a similar program in Portugal continues to accept applications.

About 132,000 have applied to the Spanish program and at least 34,000 new citizenships have been granted so far. Most have come from Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia, according to news reports. The program began refusing a high number of applications in 2019, saying that fraudulent cases were on the rise.

Even before the Spanish bureaucracy considers the evidence, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain, along with a Jewish community in countries of origin, must approve the application. Then, there is the need to show a “special connection” to Spain, which the Valenzuela family fulfilled by contributing to the Spanish Chamber of Commerce in Bogota. Applicants must also speak Spanish.

There is no requirement to be a practising Jew or give up citizenship from their home country.

New possibilities

It’s not lost on Valenzuela that the process brings cash into Spain – a 100 euro application fee, about 600 euros for notarizing original documents delivered in person to Madrid and another 80 euros to write a test on knowledge of Spanish history, society and culture. Applicants also travel to Spain at their own expense, putting it far out of reach for many applicants from Latin American countries with high unemployment and weak currencies.

It means successful petitioners will have both money and education. And many are young, bringing the possibility of adding new workers to an aging country. United Nations data indicates 10% of the Spanish population was over 60 in 1950, but that will rise to 30% in 2025.

For Valenzuela and her partner, Carlos Perdomo, a lawyer from Colombia working in Vancouver, proving Jewish roots in Spain is another chance at finding a way out of the economic difficulties in their home country. They are both also permanent residents of Canada.

“We wanted to improve our possibilities for the future [outside Colombia],” she said, and obtaining a European Union passport should help.

“It’s so great to know more about your family and have a material link. We would love to use it, maybe for a master’s degree in the future. It would be cheaper and easier for me to travel there, having citizenship.”

Valenzuela says her trip to Spain in December was her first and she was surprised at how much it is like Bogota: disorganized, loud and crowded.

“Being a Colombian is always linked to the notion that Europeans are better in every way. It’s easy to romanticize and idealize Spanish culture and art, but the reality is we’re very similar.”

Erin Ellis is a former newspaper reporter and copy editor for the Edmonton Journal and Vancouver Sun. She also contributes to Canada’s National Observer and CBC News. She’s keenly interested in history and loves telling people’s stories.

Format ImagePosted on February 25, 2022February 23, 2022Author Erin EllisCategories LocalTags citizenship, Colombia, immigration, Portugal, Spain

Rapper makes us proud

Matisyahu, the reggae rapper whose refusal to be bullied into a political pledge resulted in his being removed from the lineup of a Spanish music festival, was eventually allowed to perform last weekend.

Global outrage over the politicizing of the musical event – and the potential whiff of antisemitism – led organizers of the Rototom Sunsplash Festival to reverse their demand that the Jewish American musician pledge support for an independent Palestine. (Not a two-state solution, mind you, or a negotiated settlement of the conflict.)

After he received an apology, Matisyahu accepted the invitation to play after all. He mounted the stage to heckles and chants of “out, out,” from multiple audience members waving large Palestinian flags.

“Let music be your flag,” he urged the audience as he proceeded with his 45-minute set, ending with a spine-tingling rendition of “Jerusalem,” a defiant anthem of Jewish survival and resilience: “3,000 years with no place to be / And they want me to give up my milk and honey,” he sang. “Don’t you see, it’s not about the land or the sea / Not the country but the dwelling of His majesty … Rebuild the Temple and the crown of glory / Years gone by, about sixty / Burn in the oven in this century / And the gas tried to choke, but it couldn’t choke me / I will not lie down, I will not fall asleep.… Afraid of the truth and our dark history / Why is everybody always chasing we?”

The incident was a nasty one, certainly, but its lesson is beautiful. Do not let bullies win, whether they attack you because of who you are or the ideas you carry. It is an issue we reflected on locally earlier this summer when outside forces attacked our community for hosting speakers from the New Israel Fund and it is an issue we face continually from the BDS movement, which, in the Matisyahu imbroglio, has shown its true colors.

Matisyahu also showed his. And it was a thing to see.

 

Posted on August 28, 2015August 27, 2015Author The Editorial BoardCategories From the JITags anti-Israel, antisemitism, BDS, Matisyahu, Palestine, Rototom Sunsplash Festival, Spain

Pledge reflects motives

In June, the Spanish government passed a law granting descendants of Sephardi Jews forced from that country in the 15th century the right to dual Spanish citizenship.

Only someone unfamiliar with the toing and froing of Jewish migrations and expulsions could be blind to the magnificence with which this move dovetails with history. For millennia, princes and fiefs, kings and counts expelled the Jews from their realms in one generation and then enticed them back in successive ones, when their perceived value rebounded or when the duchy or kingdom was in financial peril. Sometimes it took a generation, sometimes it took 600 years, as in the case of Spain, which, it should be noted, is now just a few notches above Greece on the financial solvency scale.

But Jews who consider taking up Spain’s generous offer will be taking a sober second look after recent events. OK, the events were a relatively small-scale tempest – a reggae festival in Valencia – but the lessons are wide-ranging and deeply telling.

Matisyahu, the once Chassidic, now just Jewish, reggae rapper, was disinvited from the Rototom Sunsplash Festival after he refused to sign a pledge in support of a Palestinian state. The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement had convinced the festival organizers that participants should be forced to commit to the Palestinian cause.

The quality of the performers or the wishes of the audience were secondary to the political positions of the musicians, apparently. Why this obscure music festival should become a flashpoint for a kerfuffle over the Middle East may seem baffling, but the strategy of the movement has been to demand loyalty oaths from anyone at any time in any place. Canadian film festivals, including the Toronto International Film Festival and the Vancouver Queer Film Festival, have been roiled over the topic in the past. These efforts at a “cultural boycott” are atrocious enough, but the worst tactics of the movement promote an academic boycott, which is as close as we can come to literal book-burning.

Is it additionally appalling that Matisyahu is not Israeli, but American? Sort of. The boycotters have attacked Israelis for the most part, but now they are turning their cannons on anyone who might think that Israel has a right to exist alongside a Palestinian state. (Note that the oath did not address a two-state solution. Coexistence is not top of the agenda for BDSers.)

Not all Jews are Zionists and, indeed, some Jews support the BDS movement. However, if you believe in the right of self-determination for the Palestinian people, but not for the Jewish people, then you are at the least a hypocrite.

The BDS movement, while a relatively new phenomenon, has its historical antecedents in the people who would paint Stars of David on Jewish shop windows. It is a mob of bullies for the most part, which calls itself pro-Palestinian, but exhibits nothing positive, only hatred and vilification of Israel.

Although a reggae festival might seem an odd place to start, the BDSers and the larger “pro-Palestinian” contingent could buy themselves some legitimacy by taking an oath themselves: to work together with all people to find a peaceful resolution so that two peoples can live in coexistence in Jewish and Palestinian states. It’s a pledge the Jewish people accepted in 1947-48 and have reiterated throughout the ensuing seven decades. The Matisyahu brouhaha is an example of the answer the Jewish people have received to that olive branch.

Posted on August 21, 2015August 19, 2015Author The Editorial BoardCategories From the JITags antisemitism, BDS, boycott, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Matisyahu, Rototom Sunsplash Festival, Sephardi, Spain, two-state solution
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