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Religious Tolerance​—500 Years Later!

FIVE HUNDRED years ago, Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain. Just one day before Columbus’ departure, another fleet left Spain, heading in a different direction. Columbus and his men returned in triumph, having discovered new lands. But the other hapless voyagers were never to see their homeland again.

Who were these people, and why were they banished from their land? They were Spanish Jews. Two weeks before Columbus received royal backing for his voyage of discovery, Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic sovereigns of Spain, issued an edict expelling all the Jews of Spain, “never to return again.” They accused the Spanish Jews of committing crimes against the holy Catholic faith.

This decree, along with the recently established Inquisition, marked the beginning of a crusade to make Spain exclusively Catholic. A decade after the expulsion of the Jews, any Moors who practiced the Islamic faith were also exiled. And the Inquisition quickly stamped out budding Protestant groups. Columbus, echoing the intolerant spirit of his royal patrons, spoke of excluding the Jews from any lands he might discover.

The spirit of religious intolerance in Spain prevailed, even down to this century. Under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, only the Catholic religion enjoyed “official protection.” Many who wished to practice another faith were arbitrarily arrested. Jehovah’s Witnesses in Spain were imprisoned on the charge of having offended the spiritual unity of Spain. In 1959 government minister Camilo Alonso Vega instructed the police force to proceed with the “extirpation” of the Witnesses’ activities. But happily, times have changed.

On March 31, 1992, exactly five hundred years after his predecessors signed the decree expelling the Jews, Juan Carlos, the present king of Spain, visited a Madrid synagogue in a symbolic meeting of the Spanish Crown with descendants of those exiled Spanish Jews.

“We have turned the page of intolerance in Spain,” declared the Spanish minister of justice, Tomás de la Quadra-Salcedo. Now Jews, Muslims, and Protestants worship without hindrance. And Jehovah’s Witnesses are no longer under ban. Madrid boasts a new mosque and a synagogue, as well as the branch office of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Spain. With over 90,000 active members, the Witnesses are considered to be the largest non-Catholic religion in Spain.

If you would like to have more information about Jehovah’s Witnesses and their beliefs, please write to Watchtower, 25 Columbia Heights, Brooklyn, New York, 11201, or to the nearest address listed on page 5.

[Picture on page 32]

Spain branch of the Watch Tower Society