The Project of Return to Sepharad in the Nineteenth Century

During the September Revolution of 1868 , once the freedom of worship was proclaimed, European Sephardic Jews, galvanized by their perception of a tolerant Spain, decided to undertake a major project to initiate negotiations with the Spanish state, in order to come back to Sepharad.

Mónica Manrique Escudero was born in Budapest, Hungary into a family of Spanish diplomats and has lived all over the world since childhood. A multi-faceted polyglot, she graduated with a degree in History from the Université de Pau (France) and holds a PhD in History from the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares (Spain). She has published numerous articles related to the history of the Jews in Spain.

"While considerable interest has focused on the contemporary Spanish reinterpretation of the Jewish medieval past, as much as to the history of the establishment of Jewish communities on Iberian soil, very few studies raised the question of how the changes in nineteenth-century Spain were interpreted by European Jewish communities… Mónica Manrique therefore should be praised for her innovative decision to dedicate her research to an almost unknown subject… [T]he study brings to light valuable information about the relations between nineteenth-century Spain and the Jews and will surely stimulate further study.”

—Nitai Shinan, National Library of Israel, AJS Review

“There is no doubt that this is a very interesting book, whose readership aims at academics and non-academics, given its highly informative yet gentle narrative style.”

—Regina Igel, Professor Emerita, University of Maryland, Sephardic Horizons

“Manrique’s work is the product of several years of intensive archival research. She has illuminated a nearly forgotten incident in Jewish-Spanish history which has become a contemporary concern. In doing so she has produced a detailed analysis of the attitudes and roles of the Jewish press and the Jewish community. Highly accessible, it would be an important addition for any Judaica library.”

—Randall C. and Anne-Marie Belinfante, AJL Reviews

“In 2015, Spanish history reached a milestone of historic proportions in its long and complicated relation with the Sephardite world: the Parliament approved Spanish nationality to Sephardic Jews. Mónica Manrique, using previously unexplored files and unpublished documents, reveals that this relation restarted in the second half of the nineteenth century, [when] a major process of political change was underway. Major revolutions that would have a great impact on the largest European Jewish communities (such as Great Britain, Holland, Germany, and the South of France) took place in Spain. [...] The Sephardim reinitiated contact with the Spanish government and asked for the abolition of the Expulsion Decree of 1492, as well as demanding the establishment of religious freedom to enable the Sephardic community to return to Spain after an imposed four-hundred-year [ban]. Written in a direct and concise manner, this brilliant piece of investigative work represents a significant and groundbreaking [...] contribution to this decisive issue for Europe and Spain.”

—Isidro Gonzalez, author of The Jews of Spain after the Expulsion: From 1492 to the Present Day