Jews in Spain

Jewish settlement in Spain took place at much the same time as settlement in France, and there were contacts between the two communities. The period under Christian rule in Spain was divided in two by an Islamic conquest, however, so the migration of Jews to Spain served to confirm the place of Arabic as a major language of the Jews as well as adding a Romance language, which was the foundation of Ladino, Judezmo, and Haketia. It also provided another example of the growth of Jewish multilingualism resulting from living in societies in which several languages were used, and increased the demand for individual plurilingualism as Jews chose or were continually required to move from one place to another. Each of the three periods of Jewish residence in the Iberian Peninsula ended with the choice of conversion or expulsion, whether by the Visigothic Catholic Hispano-Romans, or the Almohad Berber fanatic Muslims, or the Castilian Catholic monarchy in 1492 (see Map 7). The Jews who converted (Anusim) sometimes continued to practice Judaism in secret, and, later, some Anusim managed to escape and return to Jewish life in western Europe, north Africa, or the Balkans and Turkey.

There is no evidence to support the legends of Jews in Spain in biblical times, but Jews may have settled there during Roman rule, which started in about 200 CE; a description of Jews attributed to Hecataeus of Abdera, a town on the south coast of Spain from the third century CE, suggests Jewish presence. Latin was the dominant and official language of the Iberian Peninsula by this time, with Vulgar Latin the vernacular, as a result of extensive Roman colonization.