The 2015 law granting Spanish nationality to the descendants of Jews expelled in 1492 is the latest example of a widespread phenomenon in contemporary Spain, the “re-discovery” of its Jewish heritage.
In The Memory Work of Jewish Spain, Daniela Flesler and Adrián Pérez Melgosa examine the implications of reclaiming this memory through the analysis of a comprehensive range of emerging cultural practices, political initiatives and institutions in the context of the long history of Spain’s ambivalence towards its Jewish past.
Through oral interviews, analyses of museums, newly reconfigured “Jewish quarters,” excavated Jewish sites, popular festivals, tourist brochures, literature and art, The Memory Work of Jewish Spain explores what happens when these initiatives are implemented at the local level in cities and towns throughout Spain, and how they affect Spain’s present.
Nonfiction
The Memory Work of Jewish Spain
January 12, 2021
Discussion Questions
In their well-written and accessible study The Memory Work of Jewish Spain, Daniela Flesler and Adrián Pérez Melgosa explore the political, cultural, and institutional processes, practices, and initiatives underway in Spain in recent years as the country comes to terms with its Jewish past and the lingering ambivalence about it in the present. Set in the context of the 2015 Spanish law that offered citizenship to Sephardic Jews and their descendants across the globe, this multidisciplinary study covers some familiar historical terrain, such as the early twentieth century philosephardic campaign of Spanish senator Angel Pulido. But the book is most valuable in offering a fresh contemporary prism, enriched by oral histories, that highlight a series of museum projects, archeological undertakings, tourism endeavors, and literary and artistic representations that add new dimensions to pressing scholarly and public debate over the tensions and contradictions inherent in Spain’s efforts to make sense of its Jewish past and present.
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