Expulsion of the Jews from Spain in the context of "Converso"

Spanish and Portuguese Jews, also called Western Sephardim, Iberian Jews, or Peninsular Jews, are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardic Jews who are largely descended from Jews who lived as New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula during the few centuries following the forced expulsion of unconverted Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. They should therefore be distinguished both from the descendants of those expelled in 1492 and from the present-day Jewish communities of Spain and Portugal.

The main present-day communities of Spanish and Portuguese Jews exist in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, and several other Jewish communities in the Americas have Spanish and Portuguese Jewish roots though they no longer follow the distinctive customs of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews.

The Massacre of 1391, also known as the pogroms of 1391, refers to a murderous wave of mass violence committed against the Jews of Spain by the Catholic populace in the crowns of Castile and Aragon in 1391. It was one of the most lethal outbreaks of violence against Jews in medieval Spain, and in medieval European history. Anti-Jewish violence then continued throughout the "Reconquista", culminating in the 1492 expulsion of the Jews from Spain. The first wave in 1391 marked the extreme of such violence.

Under duress, Jews began to convert en masse to Roman Catholicism across the Iberian Peninsula after the massacre, resulting in a substantial population of conversos known as Marranos. Catholics then began to accuse the conversos of secretly maintaining Jewish practices, and of thus undermining the newly united kingdom's nascent national identity. In 1492, the Catholic Monarchs of Spain Ferdinand and Isabella issued the Alhambra Decree, which ordered the expulsion of Jews who had not converted to Catholicism. The resulting diaspora came to be known as the Sephardic Jews.

Alagón is a municipality in the province of Zaragoza, Aragon, Spain. According to the 2009 census (INE), it had a population of 7195.

Historically, a Jewish community living in Alagón during the period of Muslim rule. However, in 1492, the community was decimated following the expulsion of the Jews.

Jewish disabilities were legal restrictions, limitations and obligations placed on European Jews in the Middle Ages. In Europe, the disabilities imposed on Jews included provisions requiring Jews to wear specific and identifying clothing such as the Jewish hat and the yellow badge, paying special taxes, swearing special oaths, living in certain neighbourhoods, and forbidding Jews to enter certain trades. In Sweden, for example, Jews were forbidden to sell new pieces of clothing. Disabilities also included special taxes levied on Jews, exclusion from public life, restraints on the performance of religious ceremonies, and linguistic censorship. Some countries went even further and outright expelled Jews, for example England in 1290 (Jews were readmitted in 1655) and Spain in 1492 (readmitted in 1868).

The disabilities began to be lifted with Jewish emancipation in the late 18th and 19th centuries. In 1791, Revolutionary France was the first country to abolish disabilities altogether, followed by Hungary in 1840 and Prussia in 1848. Hungary enacted the full emancipation on 29 July 1849. Emancipation of the Jews in the United Kingdom was achieved in 1858 after an almost 30-year struggle championed by Isaac Lyon Goldsmid with the ability of Jews to sit in parliament with the passing of the Jews Relief Act 1858. The newly united German Empire abolished Jewish disabilities in Germany in 1871.The first Jewish settlers in North America arrived in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in 1654. They were forbidden to hold public office, open a retail shop, or establish a synagogue. When the colony was seized by the British in 1664 Jewish rights remained unchanged, but by 1671 Asser Levy was the first Jew to serve on a jury in North America.