It is a city that, when you discover it in all its facets, without forgetting its rich gastronomy and its good wines, will not leave you indifferent.
Nothing remains of their Jewish past, which is barely remembered and pointed out. In Spain, there is still a great lack of pedagogy and a new narrative to better understand our Jewish past and the absence of the Sephardim, which left intangible traces in our country and which still remains in Spanish traditions and customs without even knowing it.
by Ricardo Angoso
Although it is not one of the best-known and most visited cities in Spain, León has an important architectural heritage, the result of a past characterised by a fascinating history, two neighbourhoods for recreation and leisure, the Húmedo and the Romántico, walls that run through various historical periods of the city and a varied offer of bars, restaurants, taverns and hotels for all tastes and budgets.
Regarding the Jewish presence in the city, we found this review on the pages of the Network of Jewish Quarters of Spain-Caminos de Sefarad that we consider very appropriate: “Unlike most cities in medieval Spain, the Jewish quarter of León was not originally located in the city centre itself, but in a location on the outskirts. We are talking about the Jewish quarter of Puente Castro, in a place known as Castrum Iudeorum, "where a Sephardic community was established as early as the beginning of the 856th century. After a period of depopulation, León had been conquered in 910 and from then on a successful repopulation began, so much so that in 994 it became the capital of the Kingdom of León. With certain setbacks such as the campaigns of Almanzor, which devastated it in 1017, the city continued to grow, especially from the reign of Alfonso V, who promulgated the Fuero of León in XNUMX."
Cited and consulted page: https://redjuderias.org/leon-2/
Below we detail the places that should not be missed on a visit to León and we give notice of the few traces that attest to the Sephardic presence in this town,
1.Palace of the Provincial Council. As the León Provincial Council website tells us, this place has witnessed the various periods of the city's history: "Since it was born in the mid-1978th century as 'Las Casas de los Guzmanes' until it was inaugurated in XNUMX, renovated and extended, as the headquarters of the Most Excellent Provincial Council of León, this building has experienced splendour and ruin, decay and modernity, as a faithful reflection of the history of the city that houses it and the society it represents." For information on visits and schedules, you can find information at:
https://www.dipuleon.es/Turismo/Atencion_Turistica/El_Palacio_de_los_Guzmanes/
2.Santo Domingo Square. It is one of the most important squares in the city and in its surroundings are some of the main monuments of the city, such as the Church of San Marcelo, the Botines House Museum, the León Museum and the Provincial Council Palace.
3.The Cathedral. It is one of the essential places to visit in the city of León and is one of the most beautiful in Spain, I would dare say unique and inimitable. Its origins date back to the 916th century, when in 737 King Ordoño II, who had occupied the throne of León a few months earlier, defeated the Arabs in the battle of San Esteban Gemaz. Its stained glass windows are impressive, some 1800 over a surface area of XNUMX square meters, dating from between the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries. Of this place we must highlight the paintings in the ambulatory of the temple, which represent a group of Jews with clothing typical of the XNUMXth century - the paintings are from the middle of that century - in what is an excellent illustration of what the Sephardic presence must have been like at that time, which was already nearing its end.
4.Church-museum of Santo Isidoro. Apart from the architectural value of this temple, whose museum is of great value, the first Cortes of León were held in the cloister of this church in 1188, a historic milestone that marked the political life of all of Europe, since for the first time in history the absolute power of the kings was limited by an entity that represented various levels of society.
5.The city walls. These walls are of Roman origin, specifically from the 1st century AD, and were subsequently extended several times. In this walled enclosure, for military purposes, the Roman legions VI and VII (Legios) were established at different periods of the Roman era, whose purpose was to control the rebel groups in the northern regions of Spain, which were opposed to Romanisation. Later, throughout the Middle Ages, between the 10th and 12th centuries, the wall was reinforced and extended during the era of the Reconquista and the fight against the Arabs.
In the vicinity of these walls, which I dare say are some of the best preserved in Spain, these first Jews from outside the city settled, next to the old “Moneda Gate”, where taxes were collected from those arriving in León and where pilgrims passed through on their way to Santiago de Compostela. This is an area (now completely integrated into the city) that is still known by the name of “the Jewish meadow”. It is said that this meadow or very close to it was one of the cemeteries of the Sephardic Jewish community of the city.
6.San Martin SquareApparently, this square was the beginning of the city's now-disappeared Jewish quarter, which was finally sealed off when the Catholic Monarchs signed the famous Edict of Granada, which expelled all Jews who did not convert to Christianity.
We have found an explanation for the arrival of the Jews in this area on the pages of the Red Juderías: “The Charter recognised a series of legal rights that, from the Council of León (1020), were applicable to both Christians and Jews. In its warmth and that of the Jacobean Route, the Jewish quarter of Puente Castro grew and prospered, becoming a Jewish quarter famous for the quality of the work of its craftsmen, especially those of leather and silver. A series of tombstones that can be seen in the Museum of León, in the Cathedral and even in the Sephardic Museum of Toledo bear witness to this period that ended abruptly in 1196, when in the context of the war between Alfonso IX of León and Alfonso VIII of Castile, the troops of the latter and of Pedro II of Aragon attacked the Jewish quarter of Puente Castro, which was defended by a wall of clay and adobe, and ended up taking it despite the brave resistance of the Jews for three days. The Jewish quarter was sacked and those Sephardim who did not die or flee were made slaves. After this episode, those who had survived settled within the city walls, to the south of the walled area, near the Parish of San Martín and in some surrounding streets, until reaching the current Calle Santa Ana, which in its time was Calle Silvana, in memory of an important Jewish family, the Silváns.
Cited and consulted page: https://redjuderias.org/leon-2/
7.The Wet Neighborhood. They are a set of narrow and hidden streets full of bars, taverns and restaurants that are generally very busy in the afternoons and evenings. Many of the streets and squares of what is today a very entertaining collection of excellent bars and restaurants were part of the Jewish quarter from the 13th century onwards, such as Plaza de San Martín, Calle Misericordia or the beautiful and very medieval Calle Mulhacín. In addition, many of these streets have now recovered the names they had when they were part of the Jewish quarter. Information obtained from the Network of Jewish Quarters: https://redjuderias.org/leon-2/
8.The Romantic neighborhood. It is a group of streets that are located between the San Lázaro Church-Museum and the perimeter of a good part of the wall. Like the Húmedo, it is a group of narrow streets full of bars and restaurants, although it is never comparable to the life that the Húmedo has. It is a place to visit more during the day, as it has a great life and numerous schools, rather than in the evening when people move around the Húmedo and the Plaza de San Martín.
9.The main square. Although it does not have the monumentality and power of the main squares of Madrid or Salamanca, it is a good place to stay or stay in the surrounding area, as it is very close to the Barrio Húmedo, Plaza de San Martín and the Cathedral. The square was on the “border” of the Christian city with the beginning of the Leonese Jewish quarter, but it was certainly integrated into it as a gateway to the Jewish world. It dates back to 1654.
10.The Museum of León. Located a stone's throw from Plaza Santo Domingo, this museum is a venue that tells the story of León from prehistory to the contemporary age and does so in a very educational way, with audiovisual media, good materials and chronological order. It is located in one of the city's great palaces, the Pallarés, and opened its doors for the first time in 1869. Here we can see some of the few physical elements of the Sephardic legacy in the city, such as the so-called Estela de Mar Selomó, which is a splendid funerary tombstone - probably the best of the dozen that have been discovered from the primitive aljama in Puente Castro - dated 1097.
11.The church-convent of San Francisco. In 1763, during the reign of Charles III, construction began on the current temple, larger than the previous one and with classicist forms typical of the second half of the 1791th century. Under the direction of Francisco de Rivas, the temple was completed in XNUMX, already during the reign of Charles IV.
12.Gaudi's Casa Botines Museum. Casa Botines or Casa Fernández y Andrés is a modernist building located in the city centre. Originally it was a commercial warehouse and private residence. Built and designed by the architect Antonio Gaudí between 1891 and 1892.
13.Church of San Marcelo. It is a simple church and is the burial place of the city's patron saint, Saint Marcellus. It was founded in the 850th century, in the year XNUMX, by King Ramiro I on the site of a pre-existing chapel built in the place that legend says was the site where the centurion Marcellus made a public confession of his faith; it is believed that it was destroyed by Almanzor.
14.The Wide Street. All things considered, this street, which leads to the other main avenue, Ordoño II, is a sort of Gran Vía in Madrid, with its best shops, businesses and commercial establishments.
15. The Castro Bridge. Or the Castrum Iudeorum , is the place where the Leonese aljama was born, the original place where the Jews lived, but of whose past little or nothing remains. There, modestly located next to a roundabout next to a football field and a children's park, a small monolith "in memory of the Jews" remembers the Sephardim who lived in that area for almost three centuries. A five-minute walk from there is the Interpretation Centre of the Jewish Lion and the Camino de Santiago, which dedicates part of its exhibition to the Sephardic past of the city.
León belongs to or is close to the rich northern Spain with an indefinite border, and is a province of medium fame within Spain, despite the arch-famous kingdom of Castile and Leon of the Catholic Monarchs. The history of the Sephardim is much more closely linked to that of the Moors of al-Andalus, the Moors managed to conquer the entire Iberian Peninsula and remained in Spain for 8 centuries. Despite everything, and the fact that in the north there have always been racist lunatics who have always denigrated the Spaniards from the south with various insults, such as the most common ones of being gypsies or Moors, because they are the ones who think they are superior and even have or had the region of Galicia as the superior Spanish Aryan race, an equivalent to the Aryan race of the German Nazis, one among their various arguments or fantasies that they have to justify a certain Spanish supremacism, perhaps for the most neo-Nazis since it is more common for them to go to the Middle Ages, with characters such as El Cid Campeador, or "El Cid Matamoros", or the Almogávares, also Moor-slayers and the first group of Spaniards who conquered lands outside the peninsula, such as Naples, and reached Turkey, which was almost on their own without the King of Aragon. And above all they admire or boast of the Catholic Monarchs, the architects of the so-called Reconquest of al-Andalus, which would be the beginning of the unity of Spain, and the religious or racist unity with the expulsion of Moors and Jews, although all this rarely appears explicitly in public and only the most energumenal fascists would do so.
Surely the latest scientific discoveries on paleogenetics and the DNA of Spaniards in general, as scientifically valid statistics, not individual DNA that has no or very little value for what is commonly known as the question of races, will not have sat very well with these Spaniards with more right-wing and fascist tendencies. And it has turned out that the Spaniards of Galicia and the bordering regions, such as Asturias, León and the west of Old Castile, are those with the highest percentage of DNA inherited from Moors and Jews among the Spanish regions, the percentages are even lower than those of southern Spain.
On the other hand, scientifically speaking about races makes no sense, even less so if it is done by white Europeans, let alone the Spanish, because through paleogenetics it has been known that the native Europeans, if we are allowed to say something like that, were black or very dark-skinned and had somewhat curly black hair, no less than until just 10.000 years ago, or later they mixed with invaders or immigrants from the Middle East and Anatolia, who introduced agriculture. Or since 2017 another discovery of paleogenetics has been known, according to which the majority of the DNA of all Europeans comes from the Yamna or Yamnaya, who about 4500 years ago conquered all of Europe, coming from the steppes in present-day Ukraine-Russia, that is, all Europeans for the most part are Slavs, who according to the Nazis were one of the subhuman races. The Yamna or Yamnaya are also responsible for introducing the Indo-European languages, they are the origin of all the languages of the current countries of Europe except Basque, or they also brought their domesticated horses, with which they conquered Europe, and the East as far as India along with military chariots, and now all domestic horses descend from those tamed by the Yamna or Yamnaya. A few years ago in Europe they gave public subsidies to protect a breed of horses with blond or light brown hair, because it was said that it was the autochthonous European breed and the only one that had been preserved wild, once again paleogenetics has discovered that they were not wild horses nor are they European horses, they were one of the many breeds domesticated since the time of the Yamna or Yamnaya only that they were discarded, and for this reason they became a little wild, because they preferred more docile horses or crosses among those they found in the territories they dominated.
In Spain and Portugal, a group of scientists, professors and experts in various fields signed a protest document questioning the alleged conquest of the Yamna or Yamnaya by violent methods as first published in several Spanish newspapers. They supposedly annihilated the native European men and European women only procreated with these Yamna or Yamnaya, arguing that this gave wings to racists. And practically anything can be interpreted as one sees fit.
In the south of Spain, where the Moors were the longest, al-Andalus is barely remembered, even though there are many monuments and archaeological remains from the Muslim era, or the names of cities, such as Almería, where in the 19th century politicians and authorities destroyed what were the longest Muslim walls in Spain, as well as the Caliphal shipyards, the only ones that remained intact in Spain, a large warehouse that served as shipyards and to store goods that were exchanged by sea. And if this happens in the south of Spain, in the north the Muslim past, as in the case of the Jews, is almost as if it had never existed.