Our Daily News Letter

The lively interest displayed today by the leading circles of my country in the restoration of an amicable understanding between Spaniard and Jew is not entirely without root in the earlier periods of its history. In view of that immortally glorious epoch of the history of the Jewish people which had its setting during many centuries in my country, it is not at all reasonable to suppose that we Spaniards had completely forgotten that element of our population which was one of the most important collaborators in the development of our civilization.

The very prominence which the Jews had achieved in the life of my country in official capacity as builders and guardians of the state and its political life bespeaks the great esteem in which they were held by all classes of society. There are historic records of the fact that even at such a time of intolerance and persecution as during the existence of the Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews, many voices were raised in sincere resentment against the injustice and cruel edict. However, it can easily be realized how the great sea of hatred and prejudice engulfed the outcry of the Spanish conscience, and a tragically erroneous interpretation of a combined religious, political and religious situation led to the greatest error ever committed by any country.

Since then great changes have taken place in the entire range of my country’s life. And I am happy to be able to state that among the first questions to receive the attention of my people in the general review of their situation and position in the world at large which introduced the contemporary period of our history, the entire issue of Spanish-Sephardic relationships was reopened in a spirit of reconciliation and rectification. I am happy that I can now speak for my beloved fatherland, once so great a factor in the world’s life, and say to our Sephardic brethren wherever their fate has carried them that the idea which I am privileged to represent is also the ardent desire of a great many of my countrymen.

It was a casual occurrence that brought me in contact with the Sephardic Jews on my travels through eastern Europe. I am not a Jew, but a Christian and do not know if there was a Jew among my ancestors, though I should hesitate to make any categorical statement in the negative, as I am one of those in my country who believe that all of us in Spain have at least some Semitic blood in our veins.

On my travels, at first through the Danubian area of Europe, in 1882, and then through Hungary, Serbia, Roumania and Turkey, in 1903, I made my first acquaintance with the existence, conditions and circumstances of the Sephardic people, which led me to extensive investigations that later enabled me to deliver my addresses in Parliament, publish the articles in the Spanish press and write the two books which I have devoted to this subject.

Since my first presentation of the subject in a speech in the Senate on November 13, 1903, I have continued laying the chief emphasis on the moral, political and historic duty my country and Government have to the Sephardim. It is not only recompensation for a great wrong of the past that I am urging my people to bestow. I am rather inclined to view the matter as one of even greater importance and significance to the Spanish nation. Its moral rehabilitation in the world, its peace with its own conscience, its return to a place of honor in the family of nations can not be achieved without a full measure of reconciliation with the Sephardic brothers, who are as much a part of the great Spanish race as we who are today living within the physical boundaries of the Spanish State.

The continued value of the Sephardim for the progressive development of Spain is fully evidenced by the vigorous part played even now in my country by the handful of Jews in it. It is said that they number only about two thousand. There is no census that establishes this or any other figure definitely. However, as their ancestors of old, so they are today showing the same high qualities in everything they undertake. In commerce and industry and finance, in the professions and even in the army they are making notable contributions to the country which is glad to have them and to receive them on terms of equality with the rest of the citizenship.

Thought I am optimistic about the final and inevitable success of the rapprochement between Spaniard and Sephardi now in progress, I do not lose sight of the opposition. It will suffice to mention the storm raised by the publication of my first book to give an idea of what modern Spain has to contend with in the form of the inherited prejudices of the past. While all liberal elements greeted with welcome the appearance of the book, the press in general as well as most of my countrymen were quite indifferent, and a veritable howl went up from the fanatics, who missing the heart of the entire matter professed to see a plot of Jewish origin, even charged the author with being a Jew and issued a warning against the threatening invasion of Jewish phalanxes from the four corners of the earth. The faculty of the old University of Salamanca, which I represented in the Senate, opposed me and denounced the book and idea to their classes.

In view of the present emigration problem facing the Jewish people, it is pertinent to remark that though I have been associated in the minds of a great many people with the advocacy of mass immigration into Spain, the Sephardic movement has never envisaged an influx on a large scale even of Spanish Jews into my country, though they would in no sense be coming into a strange land with all the attending difficulties of self-adjustment to new circumstances. The fact is that I never proposed that the repatriation of the Sephardim must or should necessarily be in the physical sense. Not only are a great many of them so situated at present as to have no need to leave their countries to go to mine, but it must be borne in mind that Spain is in no way prepared economically or socially to digest a consideraable addition to its population. My idea is rather that this of the heart and the spirit between my country and the repatriation and rapprochement should be one of the mind, of the heart and the spirit between my country and the Sephardim, between the Spaniards with a fatherland and those without it, so that the former may lend the prestige of their State to the dispersed brethren and the latter inject into the life of their repenting country a new stream of vigor, a new current of fresh moral values that will take Spain out of its isolation from the universal progress and help to restore it by their innate and inherited cultural powers to the position that once was held by Spain.