Senor Ignacio Bauer President of Jewish Community in Madrid Tells J.t.a. New Government Sincere in I

Senor Ignacio Bauer, the President of the Jewish Community of Madrid, told the J.T.A. Representative that he had spoken with the members of the new Cabinet, and he was assured that the Government is sincere in its intention to enable Jews to enter Spain. There cannot be any talk of mass immigration, he said, but the doors of the country will be open to Jews with capital or initiative and highly trained professional men.

The Jewish Community has now been recognised by the Government, Senor Bauer added, while under the old regime it did not enjoy official recognition. Last Friday, he said, the synagogue, which was established recently, was opened officially for the first time since the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, over 400 years ago. For the first time, too, the Jews have now received from the Madrid Municipality a plot of land for a Jewish burial ground.

NEW SPANISH PRIME MINISTER AND MINISTER OF INTERIOR LEADING MEMBERS OF ORGANISATION FOUNDED TO BRING ABOUT RETURN OF JEWS TO SPAIN.

The new Spanish Prime Minister, Senor Alcala Zamora, and the Minister of the Interior, Senor Miguel Maura, were among the leading members of an organisation that came into prominence in 1924, under the presidency of Senator Angel Pulido, for the purpose of bringing about a return to Spain, not necessarily physical, because of the small opportunities for immigration existing in the country now, of the descendants of the Spanish Jews who were driven out in the expulsion of 1492.

The present generation of Spaniards, especially those who think of their country in terms of world civilisation, a statement issued at the time by this Organisation said, realise the grave error and injustice committed against the Jews by the expulsion of 1492, and are determined to do everything possible to heal the breach not only for the good of their own country but also as an act of restitution to the descendants of those who were wronged. As Spain’s writers, thinkers and public men become more acquainted with the facts of Sephardic life, as they learn more of the lasting affection these Jews have for the country which mistreated them so ignominiously, they wax more and more enthusiastic about the aims of the movement to bring Spaniard and Jew back again in a common bond of amity.

The famous Spanish novelist, the late Blasco Ibanez, who wrote among other works “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” and who was one of the leaders of the Spanish Republican movement, speaking in 1925 of this movement for the return of the Sephardic Jews to Spain, prophesied that “as soon as a Republican form of Government is instituted in Spain, it will be easy to bring Jews back to the country. The monarchy is the strongest support of the Catholic Church and will not permit the return of the Jews”.

The famous Spanish painter Zuloaga, when he was in New York in 1925, paid a visit to the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogues there, and in conversation with Rabbi do Sola Pool said that he, too, was strongly in favour of the movement to induce the Sephardic Jews to return to Spain. He was familiar, he said, with a large number of buildings scattered through Spain, which over 400 years ago were used as synagogues and to-day are churches, libraries, etc.

The Duke of Alba and Berwick, who was Foreign Minister under the Monarchy and has gone into exile with the King, claimed in an interview with the J.T.A. a few months ago that under the monarchical regime at that time, too, the position of the Jews living in Spain was exactly the same as off other inhabitants of the country according to whether they are Spanish citizens or foreign nationals. If they are Spanish citizens, they are treated in the same way as other Spanish citizens, and if they are foreign nationals they are treated like other foreign nationals living in the country who are not Jews. Jews can acquire citizenship in the same way as any other people, he said.

The late Mr. Lucien Zolf, when he was in Spain, reported also that the acquisition of Spanish nationality by Jews was not subject in any way to religious conditions and several members of the small Jewish congregation of Madrid are Spanish nationals, some of them by birth.