Spanish and Portuguese Nationality for Sephardic Descendants

Between 2015 and the early 2020s, Spain and Portugal both offered citizenship to the descendants of Sephardic Jews, framed as reparation for the expulsions of 1492 and 1497. Between them the two schemes received well over 200,000 applications.

Both are now closed or effectively so.

This page sets out what the two laws required, what they got wrong, and what — if anything — can still be done. It is written by genealogists, not lawyers. We can tell you what the schemes asked for in the way of ancestry and what would constitute evidence of it. For anything turning on immigration law, take proper legal advice in the country concerned.

A warning about currency. This area has changed repeatedly and quickly. Our information runs to around May 2026. Deadlines, requirements and the status of pending applications may all have moved since. Check the current position before acting on anything here.

Where do the two schemes stand now?

Closed, or effectively so — and if you are reading this hoping to apply, you have almost certainly missed both. We would rather tell you that at the top of the page than at the bottom.

Spain’s scheme closed to new applications on 1 October 2019. It ran for four years, received roughly 132,000 applications, and produced tens of thousands of grants — and, from 2021, a very large number of refusals, many of them of Latin American applicants, which generated appeals and controversy.

Portugal’s scheme was progressively tightened and then ended. It was by far the easier of the two — no language test, no residence requirement, no deadline — and its volume grew accordingly. Following a series of controversies from 2021, the requirements were substantially tightened in 2022 and the route was subsequently closed to new applicants.

What did Spain’s law require?

Sephardic origin, a special connection with Spain, and two examinations.

Spain’s Law 12/2015 was passed on 24 June 2015 and came into force on 1 October 2015, originally for three years and extended by one to 1 October 2019.

It offered Spanish nationality to sefardíes originarios de España — Sephardim of Spanish origin — without any residence requirement and without requiring applicants to renounce their existing nationality. That was a genuine and unusual concession.

Applicants had to establish two separate things.

First, Sephardic origin. The permitted evidence included a certificate from the Federación de Comunidades Judías de España; a certificate from the president of a Jewish community where the applicant lived; a certificate from a rabbinical authority recognised in the applicant’s country; evidence of Ladino or Haketía as a family language; a ketubah drawn according to the tradition of Castile; or a report from a competent body on the applicant’s surnames, family language and other indications.

Second, a “special connection with Spain” — especial vinculación. This was assessed separately and could rest on charitable, cultural, economic or family ties.

And two examinations: the DELE A2 Spanish language test, and the CCSE test on Spanish constitutional and sociocultural knowledge. Applicants over seventy and nationals of Spanish-speaking countries were exempt from the language test.

The whole application went through a Spanish notary and then to the Ministry of Justice.

Spain never published an official list of Sephardic surnames. Lists circulated widely online claiming to be the approved government list. They were not. Surnames were apparently one indicator among several that a certifying body might consider — never a criterion in law, and never a list.

What did Portugal’s route require, and what changed?

A certificate from a Portuguese Jewish community, and almost nothing else — until 2022.

Portugal amended its nationality law by Organic Law 1/2013, implemented through Decree-Law 30-A/2015, in force from 1 March 2015.

It offered naturalisation to descendants of Portuguese Sephardic Jews and it was dramatically easier than Spain’s: no language test, no residence requirement, no examination, no deadline.

The evidence required was a certificate from a Portuguese Jewish community — in practice from the community in Lisbon or the one in Porto — attesting to the applicant’s descent from Portuguese Sephardic Jews, on the basis of family names, family language, and direct or collateral ancestry.

The volume was very large. Applications ran to well over a hundred thousand, with tens of thousands granted.

What changed

From 2021 the scheme attracted sustained scrutiny, prompted in part by the naturalisation of several high-profile foreign nationals — including the businessman Roman Abramovich, whose supporting documents were subsequently published by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and do not meet the Genealogical Proof Standard.

A criminal investigation followed, in the course of which a senior figure at one of the certifying communities was arrested in 2022 in connection with allegations concerning the citizenship process. The community concerned denied wrongdoing. These are legal proceedings and we take no view on them. We record the fact because it is the reason the law changed.

In 2022 the requirements were substantially tightened, most importantly by requiring an effective connection to Portugal — demonstrated through travel, property, or other tangible and continuing links — in addition to documentary proof of descent. The route was subsequently closed to new applications.

What did both laws get wrong about who Sephardim are?

Five things — and this is stated not as a criticism of the intention, which was generous, but of the design, which was not built by genealogists.

1. They conflated “Sephardi” with “expelled”

Both laws were framed as reparation for the expulsions. But most of the Sephardim with a demonstrable documentary connection to Iberia are not descended from the expelled at all.

The Western Sephardim — the communities of Amsterdam, London, Hamburg, Bordeaux, Bayonne and Livorno, and from them the Atlantic world — descend overwhelmingly from New Christians who converted and stayed, sometimes for four or five generations, and left later. That is precisely why their records are so good: they were merchants operating openly in European jurisdictions, and their congregations kept registers.

Meanwhile the largest populations genuinely descended from the 1492 expellees — the Eastern Sephardim of the Ottoman lands and the Megorashim of North Africa — had been outside Iberia for five hundred years and had no “special connection” of the kind Spain required.

So the law’s easiest applicants and its most historically apt applicants were different groups.

2. The criteria were cultural, not genealogical

Look at what Spain accepted as evidence: surnames, family language, community certification, a ketubah. Look at what it did not require: a documented line of descent.

Consider what follows. A family speaking Ladino in Istanbul for five hundred years satisfies the language criterion effortlessly. A Turkish Sephardi family — genuinely, indisputably descended from the expelled — might then struggle with the especial vinculación test, because their connection is to Sepharad, not to modern Spain. And a Latin American applicant with no Jewish ancestry whatever would pass the Spanish language and culture examinations without difficulty.

Neither test measured descent. One measured culture; the other measured a relationship with the modern Spanish state.

Also, it is reasonable to ask whether someone with very remote Sephardic ancestry – and no connection with Sephardic community or culture – should have been considered under the scheme.

3. Surnames were allowed to do work they cannot do

As our surnames page sets out at length, Iberian surnames do not distinguish Jews from Christians. They were formed in the same system; converts frequently took the names of their Christian godparents; and the same names are borne today by tens of millions of people in Portugal, Brazil and Spanish America.

All 100 of the commonest Portuguese surnames and 99 of the commonest 100 Spanish surnames have been used by Sephardim at some point. A criterion that admits everybody is not a criterion.

4. The certification model asked the wrong institutions

Neither government built genealogical capacity. Both delegated the determination of descent to Jewish community organisations, which were religious and communal bodies, not genealogical ones; had no professional genealogical staff, standards or peer review; faced tens of thousands of applications from dozens of countries; had no practical means of verifying claims made about families in Salonica, Aleppo, Tetouan or Recife; and, in Portugal, charged fees for the certificates they issued.

That is not an accusation against anybody. It is an observation that these organisations were asked to perform a technical function they had never been resourced or constituted to perform, at a scale nobody anticipated. A predictable consequence was a commercial market in so-called surname reports and certificates,

5. And so people with no Sephardi ancestry succeeded, while others with it failed

Both outcomes happened.

Successful applications were made by Ashkenazi Jews with ancestry entirely from the Pale of Settlement — our page on Ashkenazim with Sephardic ancestry sets out why those claims are almost never documentable. Also, it seems possible that people with no Jewish ancestry, including descendents of possible conquistadors, received Spanish citizenship.

A scheme whose outcomes correlate poorly with the thing it was trying to measure has a design problem, and it is a design problem a genealogist could have identified in an afternoon.

What if this affects you?

If you obtained citizenship under either scheme, you have a nationality and that is a legal fact. But understand what it is and is not. A country processing an application against the criteria it set is not genealogical proof. If you want to know who your ancestors actually were, that is a separate and entirely worthwhile piece of work — and in our experience it is more interesting than the certificate.

If you were refused, that is a legal question and you need a lawyer in the relevant country, not a genealogist.

If you bought a surname report or a certificate of Sephardic ancestry, our surnames page explains why it does not establish what it appears to establish. The Sephardic Genealogical Society’s Code of Conduct provides that clients sold such reports should be offered full refunds. Unfortunately, people issuing such certificates are unlikely to choose to comply with the Code.

Both Spain and Portugal still offer some advantages to citizenship applicants with Sephardic ancestry, so it is worth checking with your lawyer. Our non-qualified understanding is that the Portuguese offer is largely cosmetic, while the Spanish one treats people with Sephardic ancestry the same as people from Latin American countries, but check with your lawyer.

What can genealogy actually offer?

Not a passport, and we would be wary of anyone who says otherwise.

What we can do is establish what is true. If you have Sephardi ancestry, it is documented somewhere: in a congregational register in Amsterdam or London, a ketubah from Livorno or Tetouan, an Inquisition file in Lisbon, a circumcision register in Mogador, a burial ground in Curaçao or Salonica.

That is a real answer with names, dates and places attached, and it does not depend on any government’s view of the matter. It also happens to be the only kind of evidence that any future scheme would be likely to accept, since the failure of these two has been widely noticed.

And if the answer is that you do not have Sephardi ancestry, we will tell you that too — quickly, and before you have spent much money.

Research services

If you would like your descent established properly, documented and cited, you can hire a professional Sephardic genealogist. We will tell you at the outset what is likely to be findable.

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