Sefarad Postponed: A Cuban-American Jew seeks Spanish citizenship

When I learned, in the summer of 2015, about the passage of what is referred to by many as the Spanish Law of Return for Sephardic Jews, my first thought was that I should pursue it. Not much, it seemed, was asked of us. The law didn’t require residency in Spain and allowed for other citizenships. Then I learned about all the paperwork that was needed. I decided it would take too much effort. Still . . . I couldn’t completely let go of the possibility of becoming espanyola, a Sephardic Jew with a Spanish passport. Every so often, I would again think I ought to do this—for the ancestors, and because of my longstanding passion for Spain and the Spanish language.

Growing up in a Cuban Jewish family, I had always spoken Spanish. It was my first language. As a young girl, I had a vague understanding that my Turkish Sephardic grandparents had a different accent because they spoke another Spanish, a very old, very antiquated Spanish. I didn’t know it was called Ladino then. I also had a vague understanding of our family’s roots in Spain. That was why, when I had the opportunity to travel on a semester abroad program, I chose to go to Spain. [ . . . ]

Afterward, it was in Spain that I became an anthropologist. [ . . . ] My great-uncle Moisés, on my mother’s Ashkenazi side, had questioned my desire to do fieldwork in Spain rather than in Israel. “They expelled your father’s family. Why go there?,” he asked. It was hard to explain. I had a strong tie to Israel; my parents and my brother and I fled to Israel in the 1960s after the Cuban revolution, and Israel was the country that gave us our freedom first, and then after a year we’d gone on to the United States. But the tie to the Spanish language and Spanish heritage had proved stronger, even though in León I struggled with being in a place so profoundly steeped in Catholicism. I didn’t dare tell anyone I was Jewish. It took years for me to “come out” as a Sephardic Jew in Spain. [ . . . ]

So, yes, I had complex, ambivalent reasons to seek out Spanish citizenship, but always the paperwork seemed daunting. Then, at the end of August of 2019, I happened to be in Miami Beach and learned that the lawyer, Luis Portero, from Málaga, would be giving an evening chat about how Sephardic Jews could obtain Spanish citizenship. [ . . . ]

There were about twenty people at the event, and Portero patiently spelled out every requirement, including language and civics exams, birth and marriage documents, police and FBI records, proof of Sephardic ancestry, and connection to Spain, a requirement that could be met through support for Spain’s cultural institutions. He said it was our right as Sephardic Jews to claim our Spanish citizenship, and he wanted to help as many of us as he could with our applications. Repairing a historical wrong, working for la justicia, he told us, inspired him as a lawyer. [ . . . ]

It still felt like a chore to gather together all that paperwork, but I found Portero to be quite congenial and I asked if we could talk further. [ . . . ] Before I knew it, he was filling out the basic application for me, so I could get in line at the ministry of justice before the upcoming 1 October 2019 deadline. [ . . . ]

By March 2020 I had almost everything in place. I needed the civics test, which I’d take at the Cervantes Institute in New York. And I needed the police and FBI criminal records check, which I’d waited on since they would expire after six months; I wanted to avoid having to request them twice (I admit that requesting these documents terrified me. I have a Kafkaesque fear of being on the radar of these officials, for my parents taught me, even after we became American citizens, never to “llamar la atención,” call attention to ourselves, or do anything that could get us deported). [ . . . ]

We were on the precipice of the pandemic, not yet aware of how dramatically it would put a halt to life as we had known it.

Soon it became clear I wouldn’t be going to Spain in May or June. Nor in July, nor in August. Nor even in September or October. The year 2020 would be cancelled. My return to Sefarad would be postponed. [ . . . ]

By May 2021 I began to receive a series of messages from the legal office of Luis Portero letting me know that the deadline to sign the application for Spanish citizenship was fast approaching. [ . . . ] The signing before a notary had to be done in person in Spain. An email from 29 October 2021 in Spanish and stilted English informed me, “Due to the imminent end of Law 12/2105 of June 24 regarding the granting of Spanish nationality to Sephardic originating in Spain, we urge our clients who due to various causes have not been able to attend the signing before a notary to attend as soon as possible.”

I wrote back and said that with the pandemic I didn’t feel it was safe to travel to Spain and asked for an extension. By 12 November 2021, I received a response letting me know that their legal office could assist me in obtaining Portuguese citizenship instead. [ . . . ]

I said I would think about it. But the truth is I didn’t know what to think. [ . . . ]

Sefarad had been postponed by the pandemic. Then it was postponed by an arbitrary deadline. La Espanya had wanted us to return, but only within a time slot that had a beginning and an end. It was not a forever invitation. Come back, departed ones, while the door is open.

Now the door had closed. And there was no key. And I wept for my ancestors. Again.