‘Spanish’ but ‘Jewish’: race and national identity in nineteenth and twentieth century Spain

Abstract

Sephardim in contemporary Spain were and are thought to be a historical-cultural ‘mix’ of ‘Jewish’ and ‘Spanish’. This ambivalent conceptualization was formed at the intersection between Spanish late colonialism in North Africa and Spanish nationalism and the (re)thinking of Spain’s Jewish and Muslim past. The ambivalent conceptualization that emerged also had an impact on Spanish policy towards the Sephardim. In this article, I approach these questions from an anthropological perspective and through historical ethnography and archival research. I conclude that the mixed notion of Sephardic Jews in contemporary Spain was an ideological construct that allowed both the socio-political inclusion as well as the exclusion of Sephardim in the Spanish national state.