June 6 -- Anniversary of the Riots of Seville and the Turning Point in the History of Sephardic Jews

On June 6, 1391 Ferrand Martinez led an attack on the Jewish quarter of Seville, destroying most of the twenty-three synagogues, burning Jewish houses and killing many people. The Jewish community had been protected by the King and the Archbishop of Seville, but both had died shortly before. Ferrand Martinez had been advocating attacks on the Jews for some time, and he took advantage of the power vacuum to lead the mobs against the Jews.
In the face of so much death and destruction, many Jews chose to convert to Christianity rather than be killed.
Vicente Ferrer led the attacks on Jews to the north, and in July and August of that year the riots spread to Valencia, Toledo and eventually to Barcelona. The image to the left shows Jews forced to listen to a sermon denouncing them, which went on for the next decades.
The Jewish community in Barcelona had been one of the largest on the Iberian Peninsula, and it was completely destroyed. Those who were not killed, fled, and that was the end of the Jewish community in that city.
Of the estimated 200,000 Jews in Spain in 1391, it is thought that one-third of them converted to Christianity over the next 25 years under the unrelenting pressures on them. This created the large population of Conversos, or New Christians, still discriminated against. They lived under the suspicion of practicing Judaism secretly, and in 1480 the Spanish Inquisition began to examine New Christians for Judaizing and many thousands were arrested, tortured, and burned at the stake.
In 1492, a century after the events of 1391, the remaining Jews were expelled from Spain, and Sephardic Jews spread around the Mediterranean basin from Morocco to Italy, Greece and Turkey. Judaism was eliminated in Spain. The Spanish Inquisition continued until it finally was abolished by royal decree in 1834.
In November, 2012, 520 years after 1492, with Spain tottering economically, the Spanish government officially invited Sephardic Jews to return to Spain with an offer of a fast track to Spanish citizenship.