History of the Jews in Spain

Spanish Jews once constituted one of the largest and most prosperous Jewish communities in the world. This period ended definitively with the anti-Jewish riots of 1392 and Alhambra decree of 1492, as a result of which the majority of Jews in Spain (between 200,000 and 250,000) converted to Catholicism and those remaining (between 40,000 and 100,000) were forced into exile.

An estimated 13,000 to 50,000 Jews live in Spain today, concentrated in the provinces of Malaga, Madrid and Barcelona as well as having a historic presence in the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla. A significant portion of these are Spanish-speaking Jews who returned to Spain after centuries of exile in northern Morocco during and after the Spanish protectorate. Ashkenazi Jews, primarily from Latin America but also of European origin are also present in Spain.

Some associate the country of Tarshish, as mentioned in the books of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, I Kings, Jonah and Romans, with a locale in southern Spain. In generally describing Tyre's empire from west to east, Tarshish is listed first (Ezekiel 27.12–14), and in Jonah 1.3 it is the place to which Jonah sought to flee from the Lord; evidently it represents the westernmost place to which one could sail.

The link between Jews and Tarshish is clear. One might speculate that commerce conducted by Jewish emissaries, merchants, craftsmen, or other tradesmen among the Semitic Tyrean Phoenicians might have brought them to Tarshish. Although the notion of Tarshish as Spain is merely based on suggestive material, it leaves open the possibility of a very early, although perhaps limited, Jewish presence in the Iberian peninsula.

More substantial evidence of Jews in Spain comes from the Roman era. Although the spread of the Jews into Europe is most commonly associated with the diaspora, which ensued from the Roman conquest of Judea, emigration from Eretz Yisrael into the greater Roman Mediterranean area antedated the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans under Titus. In his Facta et dicta memorabilia, Valerius Maximus makes reference to Jews and Chaldaeans being expelled from Rome in 139 BCE for their "corrupting" influences. According to Josephus, King Agrippa attempted to discourage the Jews of Jerusalem from rebelling against Roman authority by reference to Jews throughout the Roman Empire and elsewhere; Agrippa warned that "the danger concerns not those Jews that dwell here only, but those of them which dwell in other cities also; for there is no people upon the habitable earth which do not have some portion of you among them, whom your enemies might slay, in case you go to war..."

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