The Algarve History Association is welcoming Virginia Palmero Dutoit to Tavira where she will speak on the Jews of Seville on Monday, February 6 in the Municipal Library at 6pm.
Virginia is employed in Seville as a museum guide at the Centro de Interpretación Juderia. This small museum offers an insight into the culture and life of Jews in Medieval Seville. An ancient tradition places Jews in Seville at the time of the destruction of the first Temple (586 BCE) and later, after the Berber invasion (1013), Seville served as a refuge for Jews who were fleeing persecution.
There were many pogroms, or extra-legal attacks on the Jewish communities in Spain, and in 1391 the entire Jewish community in Seville was attacked and nearly destroyed and the attackers converted their synagogues into churches. The once vibrant community never recovered.
After the conquest of Grenada by the Catholic monarchs in 1492, the Jews of Seville, along with the other Jews of Andalusia, were banished from the Catholic kingdoms of Spain.
