Gaiak
About the expulsion of the Jews from the Lordship of Vizcaya in 1486
Representative at the General Parlament of Bizkaia 1999 - 2019
Translation: MUÑOZ ALDECOA, Elena
In these global times, in which we are so given to denouncing other people's wrongs, and to proclaiming our enthusiastic solidarity with the victims of abuses and atrocities that "others" commit in distant lands, I find it appropriate to bring to our minds those injustices which "we" the ‘vizcaínos” (biscayan people) perpetrated even against our idolized provincial law; because a sincere historical memory requires not only knowing the good we did, but also recognizing the evil we caused so that it does not become a dishonest pastiche from which to learn anything would be impossible.
Given that the conflict in Palestine is unfortunately a current and relevant topic, we are going to discuss here our relationship with the Jewish people, who were dispersed throughout the world and who also had a centenarian presence in the shadow of the Guernica tree, something that most Biscayans have not wanted to remember during the last centuries.
The question is simple: what happened to the Biscayan Jews? Did the Catholic Monarchs expel them in 1492, as they did with the rest of the Spanish Jews? As it turns out, no: we expelled them six years earlier, in 1486; in my opinion, for quite shameful reasons: to take control of their commercial activity.
The Jewish quarter of the town of Valmaseda (Balamaseda now) stood out within the network of peninsular Jewish quarters, this one being the second Jewish quarter in the Basque Country and only surpassed by the one in Vitoria. The Jewish quarter first mentioned was the only one which acquired notability within the Señorío (Lordship) of Vizcaya, also existing Jewish presence in the towns of Abadiano and Lequeitio, the city of Orduña and, occasionally, in the town of Bilbao.
According to the studies of Ángel Rodríguez Herrero, the Jewish quarter of Valmaseda was located in the San Lorenzo neighborhood, next to the Old Bridge, and its presence in the town was possible thanks to the protection offered by the Velascos, then condestables (constables) of Castile.
The aljama (Jewish community) actively participated in the repartimientos, the distribution document that detailed the shares paid to the monarchy; for example the payment of 2,100 maravedís in 1474, and of 1,500 maravedís and 28 castellanos of gold in 1482. This large outlay, greater than that of the aljama of Burgos, would explain the protection the Castilian monarchs offered to the Jews of Valmaseda when the residents rose up and acted against this minority. In this respect we can mention the anti-Jewish riots in 1483 and 1486.
In the first one, the council ordered “that no Jew live in the town, nor marry a valmasedana ”.During the second one, in 1486, the Jews had to take refuge in Villasana de Mena in order to save their lives.
The response of the Catholic Monarchs crystallized in the Provisión Real (Royal Provision) of the 1st of March of 1486, in which they protected the Jews of Valmaseda, decided that the laws would let them live in the town and ordered the safe readmission of the fugitives, a resolution that the mayor of the town did not comply with.
The Catholic Monarchs commissioned García López de Chinchilla to facilitate the return of the Jews to Valmaseda, while the town council went to the Juntas Generales de Vizcaya (Biscayan General Parlament) an institution where in 1486 was agreed by the apoderados (representatives), standing and loudly proclaming “vala, vala, vala” (triple ritual approval), that the Jews should abandon not only the town, but also Vizcaya.
During the mentioned session of the Juntas (Parlament) " under (so) the tree of Guernica", the attorney of the Jewish community, Don Harón , accepted on its behalf -under obvious duress- that they the Jews would leave Valmaseda and the Lordship forever.
Faced with this situation of done deal, the Catholic Monarchs ended up confirming the agreement of the Juntas on the 30th of January of 1489; it was uted by the corregidor (magistrate), so the Jews could not return to Valmaseda.
Despite the fact that the Catholic Monarchs protected the Jews as their subject citizens and vassals, it was only possible to compensate for their forced departure by creating a “commitee” that would evaluate the goods that the Jews of Valmaseda had to leave behind, all this with the purpose of paying them a “justiprecio” (a fair price) in return. But what the expulsion was really about was, not taking their property, but taking over the control that the Jews had over trade, that after the expulsion ended up under someone else´s hands.
An interesting document from the Archivo General de Simancas, dated 1488 and therefore a contemporary one, clearly expresses the injustice committed in Valmaseda. The text, in a modernized version, reads as follows:
"… Having the Jews in that small privileged village no caused any evil nor harm to any person, you expelled them, and you give them no place to live in it, more than a hundred years having already passed (since) they and their ancestors lived and dwelt in it”.
Unfair agreements of a parliamentary institution can and must be denounced and repeal. Even more so if, as it is the case, the anti-Semitism has been for centuries one of the hallmarks of the Biscayans and Basques in general and has persisted in a hidden form until very recently. When even a respected expert in our provincial history tries to sweeten the Guernica agreement of expulsion of 1486 in one of his works on humanism and freedom in our jurisdictions, as if it was a trait of Biscayan magnanimity towards strange people, stating that the Biscayan General Parlament “assisted” the Jews of Valmaseda, instead of saying what was really done to them despite being as Biscayan by birth as anyone else, only that of a different religion: expelling them against the law and under duress.
Nowadays, in the Valmaseda of the 21st century itself, the expulsion of the Jews is sometimes trivialized as just another in the “Medieval Markets” festival held in May.
As a member of the Biscayan General Parlament ( 1999 and 2019) I twice presented initiatives to repeal the agreement of the 1486 Jews expulsion: I did it because of its unfair nature and opposition to the Fuero (Jurisprudence), and also because it acted against an entire Bizkayan community for no definite causes, neither individual nor collective, and only due to the desire for profit and to take control of their commercial sector.
The first time I submitted a Proposición no de Norma (non-regulatory, a bill) so that the Biscayan General Parlament must expressely reject:
“ ... and void the agreement made in the Biscayan General Parlament in Santa María la Antigua of Gernika, on March the 2nd and the 7th 1486, by which the Jewish communities of the Villa of Balmaseda and the Señorío de Bizkaia (Biscay Manor) were pushed to leave"; they must as well ‘their sincere regret for the consequences that this agreement entailed for the Biscayans of Jewish religion whose families had in many cases been living for more than a century in the Villa and in the Señorío.”
Was it approved? Certainly not: some political groups, who “split hairs” for other issues of “historical memory” which particularly interest them, gave the most absurd reasons for opposing my bill.
The two groups that supported the gobierno foral (regional government) as a majority, the Nationalist one and the Socialist one, defended that it was better not to enter into the specific agreements of the Juntas but to do something more generic related the unfair agreements that had been adopted throughout our regional history; they also asked for a new initiative with a more generic text to be formulated. For this reason, I agreed to withdraw the first initiative, seeking to achieve approval of a new agreement.
Then I submitted the following bill, of a generic nature as ed: “The Biscayan General Parlament agree to express their regret for the contents of agreements and regulations adopted throughout their long history which affected, persecuted or excluded in / from Bizkaia any person or human group due to their origin, ethnicity, culture, ideas or religion.”
Once the vote was carried out, the new bill was rejected by the Biscayan General Parlament Commitee, as it only had my support and that of the PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español, Spanish traditional Left wing), the abstention of the PP (Partido Popular, Spanish traditional Right wing), and the negative ballots of the PNV and Bildu (Nationalits) and Podemos (Left wing).
It never ceases to amaze me the “unreasonable reason” of certain senses of voting that caused Don Harón and the Biscayan Jews to be once again banished from the Lordship of Vizcaya by the Biscayan General Parlament on October 9th, 2017, since we destroy our ancestor when we refuse to remember it.
By the way, this is the same that some people have been doing for a time in relation to the victims of the terrorism and the thousands of citizens who had to leave our land because they were persecuted: forgetting them as if they had never existed and were not our own people too, just like they did to the Jews in 1486.
