Abstract
In this article, I argue that the spatial practices of the contemporary Jewish organisations in Barcelona’s medieval Jewish neighbourhood represent claims for public recognition. As a small and quite invisible minority within the diverse city population, Jewish groups increasingly claim that their presence in the city should be recognised by political authorities and ordinary citizens alike. They do so through a series of spatial practices around the medieval Jewish neighbourhood, which include (1) heritage production, (2) the renaming of streets and (3) the temporary marking of urban spaces with Jewish symbols. I have grouped these practices under the umbrella concept of ‘place-recovering strategies’ because all of them attempt to ‘recover’ the lost urban environments inhabited by their Jewish predecessors before they were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. By recovering I do not mean a mere passive restoring of urban spaces and places but rather a creative process in which historical narratives and myths of the past play a crucial role. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, I argue that these place-recovering strategies are part of a quest for the visibility, legitimacy and recognition of Jews.
Highlights
Across European cities, old Jewish neighbourhoods have become sites of struggles for the recognition of Jewish minorities
I present examples of spatial practices of Jewish religious, cultural and heritage associations and small businesses that have recently taken place in and around the medieval Jewish neighbourhood, and which I group under the concept of place-recovering strategies
Based on an analysis of the spatial practices of some contemporary Jewish organisations of Barcelona in relation to the city’s medieval Jewish neighbourhood, I have argued that, next to place-keeping, place-making and place-seeking strategies, a fourth set of strategies, which I call place-recovering strategies, should be added to the typology. This improves our understanding of the ways in which minority religions claim the recognition of their presence in contemporary urban contexts through their spatial practices
Summary
Across European cities, old Jewish neighbourhoods have become sites of struggles for the recognition of Jewish minorities. The recovery of the Barcelona call (the Catalan word for a medieval Jewish neighbourhood) through the spatial practices of diverse Jewish initiatives, including cultural and heritage associations, businesses and some religious communities, must be understood against the background of a wider international interest in that past and a proliferation of memorialisation projects. I present examples of spatial practices of Jewish religious, cultural and heritage associations and small businesses that have recently taken place in and around the medieval Jewish neighbourhood, and which I group under the concept of place-recovering strategies. Some are secular organisations that engage with the neighbourhood from a cultural and heritage perspective, whereas others, in particular the local branch of Chabad-Lubavitch, do so by organising religious rituals for locals and tourists They all share the reference to the Jewish past of the neighbourhood in their aspirations for the current Jewish presence in the city to be known and publicly recognised. Some permanent, others temporary, contribute to re-appropriating an urban space in which Jewish organisations feel disinherited due to heritage policies and private economic practices that, for the most part, exclude them
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