‘Spanish’but‘Jewish’: race and national identity in nineteenth and twentieth century Spain

Abstract

Sephardim in contemporary Spain were and are thought to be a historical-cultural "mix" of "Jewish" and "Spanish". This ambivalent conceptualization was formed at the intersection between Spanish late colonialism in North Africa and Spanish nationalism and the (re)thinking of Spain's Jewish and Muslim past. The ambivalent conceptualization that emerged had also an impact on Spanish policies towards the Sephardim. In this article, I approach these questions from an anthropological perspective and through historical ethnography and archival research. I conclude that the mixed notion of Sephardic Jews in contemporary Spain was an ideological construct that allowed both the socio-political inclusion as well as the exclusion of Sephardim in the Spanish national state.

On Belonging and Other Dreams. The Ambiguous Positions of the Jews in “Spanish Morocco”

“…The idea of a shared identity between Sephardi Jews and Spaniards was beginning to be developed already by the nineteenth century, when Spain was attempting to assert its colonial projects vis-à-vis other European powers (Ojeda-Mata 2015). The liberal political movement called filosefardismo ("philo-Sephardism") pursued the Hispanicization of Sephardic Jews and aspired to redirect their loyalty towards Spain.…”

“…As Maite Ojeda-Mata (2012) has pointed out, this pragmatic approach coexisted with the determination to preserve the national and cultural "purity" of the nation-state's core, that is, peninsular Spain. As a matter of fact, although philo-Sephardism was vibrant in the colonies, in Spain the Jewish communities, largely Sephardi, had to live in anonymity (Ojeda-Mata 2015). Being both Spanish and Jewish was only possible outside the Peninsula, outside the national territory, so this hybridity would not threaten Spanish national identity, which was defined as inherently Catholic.…”