Distribution
Prior to 1492, substantial Jewish populations existed in most Spanish provinces. Among the more prominent were in Toledo, Córdoba, Seville, Málaga and Granada. Smaller towns such as Ocaña, Guadalajara, Buitrago de Lozoya, Lucena, Ribadavia, Hervás, and Almazán were founded or inhabited principally by Jews. In Castile, Aranda de Duero, Ávila, Alba de Tormes, Arévalo, Burgos, Calahorra, Carrión de los Condes, Cuéllar, Herrera del Duque, León, Medina del Campo, Ourense, Salamanca, Segovia, Soria, and Villalón were home to large Jewish communities or aljamas. Aragon and Catalonia had substantial Jewish communities in the famous Calls of Girona, Barcelona, Tarragona, Valencia and Palma (Majorca).
The first Jews to leave Spain settled in what is nowadays Algeria (such as in Oran and Tlemcen) after the massacre in Catalonia that took place in 1391. Following the 1492 expulsion from Spain, and the subsequent expulsions in Portugal (1497), these Jews, the nascent Sephardim, settled mainly in the Ottoman Empire (primarily in the province of Bosnia, Anatolia, the Levant and Ottoman North Africa), Morocco and Algeria, southern France, Italy, Spanish North America (Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, New Mexico, Texas (Tejano), Arizona, and Mexico), Spanish South America and Portuguese Brazil and Goa, as well as the Netherlands, whence a number of families continued on to the former Dutch possessions of Curaçao, Suriname, Aruba and New Netherland (now New York), England (as well as English colonies such as Barbados and Jamaica), Germany, Denmark, Poland, Austria and Hungary.
As a result of the Jewish exodus from Arab lands, many of the Sephardim from the Middle East and North Africa relocated to either Israel or France, where they form a significant portion of the Jewish communities today. Other significant communities also exist in New York City, Argentina, Montreal, and Gibraltar.
Read more about this topic: Sephardi Jews
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)