According to the Spanish Federation of Jewish Communities, which processes the applications, there were about 6,000 enquiries in the first month alone - including one from an unnamed member of the US Congress.
Source/Credit: BBC / PRI's The World
By Gerry Hadden | March 6, 2013
More than 500 years ago, tens of thousands of Jews fled Spain because of persecution. Now their descendants are being invited to return.
Before the infamous Spanish Inquisition of the 15th Century, some 300,000 Jews lived in Spain. It was one of the largest communities of Jews in the world.
Today, there are about 40,000 or 50,000 - but that number could be about to swell dramatically.
In November, Spain's justice minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon announced a plan to give descendants of Spain's original Jewish community - known as Sephardic Jews - a fast-track to a Spanish passport and Spanish citizenship.
"In the long journey Spain has undertaken to rediscover a part of itself, few occasions are as moving as today," he said.
Anyone who could prove their Spanish Jewish origins, he said, would be given Spanish nationality.
The news spread like wildfire among Sephardic Jews around the world.
According to the Spanish Federation of Jewish Communities, which processes the applications, there were about 6,000 enquiries in the first month alone - including one from an unnamed member of the US Congress.
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Interesting. And what about the Muslim Moors? will their descendants also receive passports considering that they were in a larger number and suffered greater?
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