Madrid to open its first Jewish museum

EJP welcomes the opening of the first Jewish Museum in Madrid, Spain.

EJP member Yves Horoit commented on the event: “It is a clear sign that Spain reaches out to Jews, after more than 500 years after expulsion.

The exiled Sephardic Jewish communities have never forgotten their Spanish roots.

Back in 1992, King Juan Carlos paid homage to the Spanish Jews and prayed for their return “home”.

Madrid to open its first Jewish Museum is long time overdue and shows the will of the Spanish people as a whole wishing to reconcile their country with their Sephardic Jewish history and heritage.”

  This is the only major capital in Western Europe without a museum, yet it has deep Jewish ties to countless Jews who continue to nurture the Sephardic culture since the expulsion of 1492 and their affection to Spain

Madrid will open a Jewish museum in a building that had been illegally occupied by members of the anti-capitalist Occupy network

The museum is set to open within two years in a building nicknamed “The Ungovernable.” In November 2019, the mayor’s municipality won a legal battle to evict the squatters from the building, who had been living there since 2017.

The museum will be leased for free for 50 years and Fundacion Hispano-Judia, a Madrid nonprofit that promotes Jewish heritage, will be responsible for providing funding for the museum, according to JTA.