Paloma Díaz-Mas, RAE academic and writer: “In Spain there is a quite hostile discourse against Israel”

From a little girl called Iunia, the first Jewish woman of whom there is news in Spain, who died in the 3rd century, to the creation of the Academy of Judeo-Spanish in Israel, in 2020. It is the overview that the academic from the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE ) Paloma Díaz-Mas (Madrid, 69 years old) shows in

Brief history of the Jews in Spain

(Cataract), a subject in which he is a great specialist, “especially in the diaspora, after its expulsion in 1492, and in its language and literature,” he says in the RAE, an institution in which he joined in November 2022. Díaz- But it is said that the appearance of the toponym Sefarad to refer to the Iberian Peninsula arose in the 2nd century.

That is why the Jews who lived there were called Sephardim.

His book is an “informative essay”, easy to read and simple in language.

“There are many academic studies about the Jews in Spain, but there was a lack of a synthesis available to any reader,” says the philologist and novelist.

More information

'A historical review of anti-Semitism in Spain', by Juan Luis Cebrián

Ask.

He cites as the first known testimony of the Jews in Spain a tombstone (of which only a drawing remains) of a girl in Adra, Almería.

Answer.

It had the registration in

Latin and said of her that she was “Iudaea” (Jewish).

It is a mystery that someone commissioned a marble tombstone for a little girl, saying her exact age, one year, four months and one day, who was she?

Although it is likely that there was already a Jewish presence in Hispania since the 1st century, when they fled the destruction of Jerusalem by the troops of Emperor Titus.

Q.

He emphasizes that very soon anti-Jewish laws were drafted on the Peninsula.

A.

In

The late Roman era already began, with the prohibition of marriages between Jews and Christians.

Then the

Visigothic legislation tended to separate Jews and Christians, a sign that they were mixed.

This was because Christianity was still incipient and wanted to clearly separate itself from Judaism, to which it was quite close.

Undated image of the first wedding between Jews celebrated in Spain since their expulsion by the Catholic Monarchs.

The ceremony took place in Madrid.Bettmann

Q.

With the Muslim invasion in 711, what was coexistence like in al-Andalus?

A.

The civil war that dismembered the caliphate of Córdoba into taifa kingdoms in the 11th century was key.

Some of these kings called Berbers to their aid, such as the Almoravids and then the Almohads, who were Islamic rigorists and persecuted Jews and Christians, which caused an exile to the Christian kingdoms.

Q.

A personality you speak of is Hasday ibn Saprut, born in Jaén in 910 and physician to Caliph Abd al-Rahman III.

He also cured the Christian king Sancho I of León of his morbid obesity.

A.

He was a polyglot, so he also acted as an interpreter at diplomatic functions.

He and other doctors were also patrons of intellectuals and poets.

Q.

The best-known personage of that period was the philosopher Maimonides, from the 12th century.

A.

It was

An exile, he was born in Córdoba, but lived there for a short time because when the Almohads arrived his family had to leave.

He goes to Fez (Morocco), Palestine and Egypt, where he works as a doctor.

He attended to the sultan and his family during the day and when he got home he had a queue of private patients that occupied him until dawn, but he made time to write philosophical and medical works in Arabic and Hebrew.

The expulsion in 1492 decreed by the Catholic Monarchs harmed the crown because the Jews paid a lot of taxes."

Q.

He says that in Christian kingdoms the Jews are attacked in sermons by Dominicans and Franciscans.

A.

Sermons were the social networks of the Middle Ages because of the impact they had on a society with very high illiteracy.

One of the topics of preaching was the anti-Jewish discourse, which accused them of deicide [having killed Jesus Christ], of having lost the favor of God...

Q.

In that breeding ground they are blamed for causing the Black Death by poisoning fountains and wells.

A.

The 14th century was horrible in Europe.

The Black Death epidemic, wars, famines, misery... The Jews were an easy scapegoat.

Investigations have shown that massacres occurred throughout Europe, including Spain.

Paloma Díaz-Mas, in the RAE on February 20. Álvaro García

Q.

Although they were under royal protection, anger on the Peninsula broke out in 1391.

A.

It all started in Seville because an archdeacon began to preach furiously against the Jews until King John I and the archbishop called him out.

He even forbids him to preach.

But in a short time the archbishop and the king die, and faced with this power vacuum, the preaching intensifies and moves the masses, who end up attacking the Jewish quarter.

The attacks spread in weeks, like wildfire, from the south to the north.

There are killings, assaults, looting... And a consequence that will create a serious problem later: massive forced conversions, because these converts will be accused of continuing to practice Judaism.

This motivated, a century later, the creation of the Inquisition and the expulsion.

Q.

The origin of the Inquisition in Spain, which in other countries lasted three centuries, was it because of the Jews?

A.

The Catholic Monarchs half deceive the Pope, on whom the Inquisition depended.

They ask permission to appoint inquisitors themselves, a legal change that was equivalent to creating it.

What decided them to do so was, during a visit to Seville, a report from the ecclesiastical authorities that raised the problem of the converts: they are bad Christians because they continue to have relationships with Jews.

In 1480, the Cortes established for the first time in the Peninsula that Jews lived in closed neighborhoods, at a time when there were already ghettos in Europe.

A few years later, surprisingly, the Catholic Monarchs decided that the solution was to expel them so that the converts would not have contact.

With the decree [of March 31, 1492] there are those who convert to stay, but not because they were given that option.

It was clearly stated that they had to leave.

Q.

The righteous pay for sinners.

A.

The most accurate figures say that about 100,000 left.

They had to leave in three months, at their own expense and without knowing where to go.

Economically, it was chaotic, the crown was harmed because the Jews paid a lot of taxes.

Critical mass, cosmographers, doctors, artisans... and cultural life in small towns were lost.

The so-called 'Bible of Alba', belonging to medieval Jewish culture. NATIONAL LIBRARY

Q.

Until the beginning of the 20th century there were no officially Jews in Spain again.

In 1924, a decree during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera rehabilitated them.

A.

The curious thing is that the decree did not mention the Sephardim, but rather had more to do with the international situation.

The Ottoman Empire had disappeared and in that area and in North Africa a status was canceled by which local citizens were protected by different Western European powers.

Spain is considering what to do with its people, who were mostly Sephardic.

The decree was aimed at allowing these people to obtain Spanish nationality.

P.

Franco had a changing position towards the Jews.

A.

At the beginning of the Civil War, the propaganda of “the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy” was used.

Starting in 1942, when it became clear that Nazism was not going to win the war, Franco's position changed.

It is true that Jews who fled from occupied France were able to go to other countries through Spain, which did not welcome them, it was only a land of passage.

Sephardim with Spanish nationality faced difficulties; some were welcomed, but others were returned to France.

It was an arbitrary, contradictory policy.

Jews were saved, but there could have been many more.

In 1949, the regime's propaganda presented Franco as "savior of the Jews."

With Franco, Jews were saved from Nazism, but they could have been much more.

“It was an arbitrary policy.”

Q.

With the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, has anti-Semitism resurfaced in Spain?

A.

Something that spread in Europe since the second half of the 19th century, racist anti-Semitism, did not take root in Spain.

Furthermore, it must be taken into account that there are few of them here, 40,000.

What there is is a discourse that is quite hostile to the Israeli State, anti-Zionist, which when the conflict returns places the blame on Israel and minimizes the attacks received.

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