Barcelona's medieval Jewish
quarter,
El Call , was just
to the south of Plaça Sant Felip
Neri, centred on today's c/Sant
Domènec del Call (
Call is
the Catalan word for a narrow
passage). As elsewhere in Spain,
Barcelona's Jewish quarter lay
nestled in the shadow of the
cathedral - under the Church's
careful scrutiny. In the
thirteenth and early fourteenth
centuries some of the realm's
greatest and most powerful
administrators hailed from here,
but reactionary trends sparked
pogroms and led to the closing off
of the community in these narrow,
dark alleys. Nevertheless a
prosperous settlement persisted
until the pogrom and forced
conversion of 1391 and exile of
1492. Today little except the
street name survives as a reminder
of the Jewish presence - after
their expulsion most of the
buildings used by the Jews were
torn down and used for
construction elsewhere in the
city. A fact which the Catalan
government does not eagerly
publicize is that the
Generalitat
itself was constructed on the
ruins of expropriated Jewish
houses. A plaque at c/Sant Domènec
del Call 7 marks what may have
been the site of the synagogue.
For more tangible remains of the
Jewish presence in medieval
Catalunya you should head for
Girona.
However, there are some
reminders of the Jewish population
in Barcelona: on the eastern side
of Montjuïc (Jewish Mountain) was
the Jewish cemetery and the castle
at Montjuïc displays around
thirty tombstones recovered from
the cemetery in the early
twentieth century, while many
documentary records of medieval
Jewish life survive in local
archives. With the demise of the
Franco regime, a small community
was again established in
Barcelona, and there is a synagogue
in the city; see
"Directory" for more
details.
