Monday marked the anniversary of a 1391 pogrom on the Spanish-ruled island of Majorca in which some 300 Jews were killed and many others forcibly baptized. In recent times, many of their descendants returned to Judaism:
Jewish habitation on Majorca ebbed and flowed with the whims of the island’s rulers, who were caught up in the intrigues of the Spanish crown, but among the Jews were influential merchants, money-lenders, and slave-traffickers, whose value to the ruling class of Spain often led to their protection.
The massacre on Majorca was matched by persecutions on the Spanish mainland, and would resume with further violence in 1413 and 1435. Ultimately, Jews were either driven from Majorca or into life as “New Christians” and secret Jews. In 2011, Francesc Antich, the regional president of the Balearic Islands, issued an official condemnation and apology for the killings—the first of its kind in Spain—and Rabbi Nissim Karelitz, head of the rabbinical court in Bnei Brak, recognized the Chuetas, descendants of these persecuted Jews (who number close to 15,000), as Jewish.
More about: History & Ideas, Jewish history, Sephardim, Spain, Spanish Expulsion