ABSTRACT
In 2015, Spain passed a law that concedes Spanish citizenship extraterritorially to persons recognized as Sephardic Jews and descended from the Sephardic Jews expelled from Spanish kingdoms in the fifteenth century. This chapter explores the implications of this institutional effort to repair a historical injustice. Given Spain’s membership in the European Union, this granting of national citizenship implies by extension European citizenship as well. In addition to proving Sephardic ancestry, applicants need to demonstrate cultural ties to Spain. This cultural connection is inflected by the official notion of Hispanicness and its legal implications. However, the 2015 law omitted the expulsions of Muslims and Moriscos (converts to Christianity from Islam), which took place during a similar historical period. By doing so, the 2015 law established a three-pronged way of redefining certain collective identities as deserving, or undeserving, of Spanish/EU citizenship: by requiring proof of Sephardic origins; by requiring a recognized cultural connection to Spain; and by denying Muslim ancestry. This chapter argues that this law fits into a rewriting of Spanish and European identity, coding Europe in racialized terms. Multiple scales of inclusion/exclusion are at work in this law, ultimately through a process of de- and re-racialization of citizenship.
