Spain: A country which believes it must atone for delivering justice 500 years ago.

Who thinks like that?

SCMP:

The Jews who flock to the two medieval synagogues in the walled city of Toledo are tourists, not worshippers. No one of their faith has practiced it in the temples’ exquisitely decorated precincts since 1492.

That was the year King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella decreed that the Jews of Spain either convert to Christianity or quit the country. Many fled, and were robbed, beaten or raped on the way out. Those who stayed faced possible torture and a gruesome death in the Spanish Inquisition.

More than half a millennium later, Spain says it is intent on rectifying its “historic mistake”. Under a proposal still to be voted on, descendants of Spanish Jews would be offered citizenship and welcomed back to the land that drove out their ancestors.

Up to 3.5 million Jews worldwide trace their lineage to Spain, although it is not clear how or when their forebears made their way there in the first place.

Known as Sephardic Jews after the Hebrew word for Spain, they scattered across Europe, North Africa and farther afield. Nowadays, the highest concentration of Sephardim is in Israel.

Spanish embassies around the globe have fielded inquiries from Jews who view the proposal as a gesture of reconciliation and others who see it as an opportunity to receive a European Union passport.

…

But exactly what the Spanish government would consider sufficient proof of Spanish heritage is not yet clear. Possible evidence includes fluency in Ladino or a surname that clearly originated in Spain, such as Toledano, meaning a person from Toledo.”We have no physical evidence that survived 500 years, and I am not certain anyone else has,” Ben-Aroya said.

For Spain, the move offers a chance to shine a light on a dark and dusty corner of its past.

“There was a veil of silence over this part of our history, and we want to pull back this veil and give voice to those Jews,” said Santiago Palomero, director of the state-run Sephardic Museum in Toledo.

The push to offer Spanish citizenship is being led by Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon, whose great-grandfather is credited with saving dozens of Jews from being interned in concentration camps during the second world war while ambassador to Romania.

The Spanish government previously has allowed some Sephardic Jews to apply for citizenship but required them to give up their current nationalities. The new proposal does not include that condition.

Although there has yet to be a vote on the bill in the parliament, the ruling Popular Party’s majority is so large that it is almost certain to pass. Moreover, the proposal has drawn virtually no opposition.

A traitorous rat, Spain’s Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon, has announced that Spain owes a great debt to the Sephardic Jewish community, and is thus going to put any Sephardic Jew who wants citizenship in Spain on the fast-track to get it.

The Sephardi were expelled from Spain in 1492 for their rampant, diabolical criminality, and attempts to undermine all of Christian society. What a great idea it is to bring them all back, now that we are in the enlightened age, where we know that it is actually a good thing to be subverted and destroyed by Jews.

From Ynet:

“The law we’ve passed today has a deep historic meaning: not only because it concerns events in our past of which we should not be proud, like the decree to expel the Jews in 1492, but because it reflects the reality of Spain as an open and plural society,” said Gallardon.

Around 300,000 Jews lived in Spain before the ‘Reyes Catolicos’, Catholic monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand, ordered Jews and Muslims to convert to the Catholic faith or leave the country.

[…]

The law potentially allows an estimated 3.5 million residents of countries where many Sephardic Jews eventually settled, such as Israel, France, the United States, Turkey, Mexico, Argentina and Chile, to apply for Spanish nationality.

“We’re very pleased to hear the Spanish government has facilitated the process of allowing Sephardic Jews to seek Spanish nationality without giving up their citizenship,” Lynne Winters, director of the American Sephardi Federation in New York told Reuters by telephone.

How romantic!

Such joy the Spanish people must feel, knowing that their ancient blood enemy, who too centuries to expel, is now being invited back into their nation.