How to Apply for Portuguese Citizenship Through Your Sephardic Jewish Heritage

New Requirements

According to larraurimarti.com, you now need to prove one of the following:

1. Inherited property in Portugal
2. Ownership in Portuguese companies or cooperatives
3. Regular trips to Portugal throughout your life

According to larraurimarti.com, applicants will now also need to show “A) The acquisition mortis causa of real estate located in Portugal, (or of rights of use and enjoyment of the same) B) the holding of shares or social participations in Portuguese trading companies or cooperatives, or C) Regular trips to Portugal throughout the applicant’s life”

Many applicants won’t meet these criteria, especially if their ancestors left Portugal centuries ago. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the reality.

The Silver Lining

There’s still good news! You don’t need to speak Portuguese for this citizenship route. That’s pretty rare for Portuguese citizenship applications.

Is It Worth It?

Absolutely! Portuguese citizenship comes with some sweet perks. You’ll get a Portuguese passport, which lets you live and work anywhere in the EU.

And, neither the passport nor the birth certificate will mention your Jewish identity nor the avenue by which you were able to get it: it’s exactly the same as any non-Jewish Portuguese person’s passport. 

Less practical but more sentimental is the birth certificate that the Portuguese government issues you. Your place of birth and all of your other details won’t change, but the fact that this is issued by the Portuguese government is a symbol of your heritage once again returning to you. 

How to Know If You’re Eligible

First, check if you meet the new criteria. Then, dig into your family history. Some folks, like Trevor Lewis from the US, discovered their heritage by chance.

Trevor shares, “My grandmother’s family was Jewish and we knew about the Jewish background, but she was not religious. She didn’t talk about her background very much, so we didn’t know many details about her background.”

When we started looking into her family, we saw her grandmother [Trevor’s great great grandmother] had the surname De Pinna and we thought maybe she wasn’t entirely Jewish or maybe she was Italian? After a little bit more research, we realised that it was a Portuguese-Jewish surname.” 

For others, like Jonah Salita, it’s less of a surprise. Jonah says, “My last name is Salita and I’ve known my whole life that my family comes from either Spain or Portugal.”

By chance when his parents visited Lisbon for their 25th wedding anniversary, a tour guide mentioned this new law that Portugal had passed to allow Sephardic Jews to regain their citizenship. 

Jonah coincidentally already had a strong connection to Portugal, as he was previously dating a Portuguese girl. One day while looking at a photo of his grandfather’s family, he was struck by how similar his relatives looked to hers. At that point, he decided to investigate further.

Researching Your Heritage

Both Trevor and Jonah initially turned to the internet for help. Both used as many resources as they could find, citing Ancestry.com as one of the most helpful along with other sites like JewishGen.

A surname is definitely a good place to start, but be aware that having a Portuguese or Spanish-sounding surname isn’t enough. You will need a lot more than that. If you’re not sure whether you’re your surname is potentially Sephardic or not, take a look at Sephardim.co.

(Note: Surnames regularly change across generations. While Trevor’s great great grandmother used the surname De Pinna, generations prior to that used De Pina, Pina, or just Sarfati.

After surnames, the next best place to start is relatives, particularly older ones. They may have birth certs or documents that can help, as well as stories that may be able to point you in the right direction.

Building Your Case

Your goal is to prove your Sephardic Jewish heritage the Portuguese Jewish community in Lisbon (CIL) (previously, you could also apply through Porto). They’ll verify your claim and provide a crucial certificate for your application.

The Portuguese Jewish Community in Lisbon has records from the time and will be able to verify whether you are, in fact, of Sephardic heritage. They also both provide a bullet-point list to guide you through the application.

However, they don’t make their records public, so in a sense you’re doing things blind but, unfortunately, that’s just a part of the process.

Once confirmed, they’ll provide a certificate which you can submit with your application to the Portuguese government. This single document is seen as the most important document in the process.

Required Documents

For Trevor, getting all the paperwork he needed wasn’t hugely complicated. His grandmother’s grandmother was British and belonged to the Bevis Marks Synagogue in London. Trevor was able to obtain the records via UCLA, who had copies of the records, but has since visited Bevis Marks and says that they’re very open to working with people who are trying to trace their heritage. 

To be on the safe side, Trevor collected more documents from the synagogue and was able to trace his family tree back even further. Since submitting his application, he has been able to trace the family tree back to Amsterdam and even back to Portugal. 

Make no mistake, there are a lot of documents and many of these need to be notarised and later apostilled. Don’t scrimp on the paperwork either: in Portugal, the rule is always the more paperwork the better.

Possible documents include:

• A document showing your family tree.
• Any documents used to create that family tree.
• Proof of Judaism.
• Birth certificates of ancestors that indicate they were a Sephardic Jew.
• Documents that show the Ladino language being used by your ancestors.
• Documents from when your ancestors arrived in their current country.
• Cemetery records.

You’ll also need to submit documents proving your identity such as:

• A copy of your passport.
• Your birth certificate.
• Proof of residence such as electricity bills.

Although Jonah thinks he can trace his family tree quite far back, he could only say with absolute certainty that his great grandparents were Sephardic Jews and you’re only able to submit relatives that you’re absolutely sure of. Absolutely certainty means knowing all the facts about them, including their birth date, death date, marriage date, country of origin, and original full name.

Sometimes documents are hard to find as many have been destroyed, often on purpose. For this reason, it’s a good idea to submit other evidence as well.

As well as documents relating to his family tree, Jonah also submitted photos of his Bar Mitzvah, recipes that had been passed down through his family, and any other customs he could think of.

He was also able to find letters between old family members, one of which contained a hand-drawn family tree. Finally, Jonah got in touch with the Rabbi from his childhood synagogue who connected him with a Sephardic rabbi. The rabbi was able to look at his parents’ ketubah (Jewish marriage contract) and was able to confirm that it was Sephardic. 

All of this adds up to a lot of documents, and it’s recommended that you keep them all in a tidy, organised folder on your computer.

The All-Important Letter

A part of the application involves submitting a letter in which you describe your motivations for obtaining Portuguese citizenship and your connections to Portugal.

In Jonah’s letter, he mentioned all the Sephardic rituals his family practiced. For example, during passover, his family would always eat rice, something that is very specific to Sephardic Jews. His family members were also regularly married a day before a major Jewish holiday, another trait of Sephardic Jews. 

Join the Community

While both Jonah and Trevor recommend sites like Ancestry.com, the main resource they recommend are the Facebook groups dedicated to the subject of Portuguese and Spanish Sephardic ancestry. 

These include:

• People of Sephardic Ancestry Pursuing Portuguese Citizenship
• Spanish & Portuguese Citizenship by Sephardic Origin
• Portuguese Citizenship to Sephardic Jews

Jonah personally has helped five people in these groups with their applications. He says finding someone else who has done it is key, and will signiciatnly cut down your own research time significantly. 

To Lawyer or Not to Lawyer?

Many people hire lawyers to help with the application. Jonah admits, “The biggest mystery in this is which lawyer to pick and when do I need a lawyer. Finding a good lawyer and knowing when you need one is hard.”

The first company Jonah worked with were incredibly impersonal and ended up firing him as a client, but at least it gave him lots of information and pointed him in the right direction. He eventually needed a lawyer to submit the application to the Portuguese government, but was able to do a lot of the other work himself.

Some also work with genealogists to trace their family history.

The Application Process

Applications need to be submitted to the Portuguese Ministry of Justice who then look at your application and decide whether or not you’re eligible for citizenship. 

You can either apply yourself or use a specialist service who will help you with the application and make sure that you have all the necessary documents. If you are applying yourself, you can either send the documents or come to Portugal and submit them in person. 

Once submitted, you’ll be given an access code so you can check the status of your application and then you wait. There’s a lot of waiting involved. There are 7 steps involved, and you will be able to see what stage your application is at. The steps take differing amounts of time.

Although you can make a correction to your application once it has been submitted, it’s highly recommended that you try and get everything right the first time round. 

Once Portuguese citizenship has been granted, the Portuguese Central Registry Office will send a Portuguese birth certificate to your address. Once you have that, you can then apply for a Portuguese passport via your nearest Portuguese consulate or embassy. 

Costs

Expect to spend around €2,000 if you use a lawyer. Trevor shares, “I think I paid around €2,000 in the end, which isn’t nothing, but I would rather know that this is going to happen rather than being stuck in limbo forever.”

Jonah paid about $1,350, including a flight to Washington, DC, for his embassy appointment.

€2,000 is still a lot of money, but it’s much cheaper than many other routes to citizenship such as Portugal’s Golden Visa Scheme. You could even spend around €2,000 applying for the D7 through a lawyer.

The application fee itself is about €200, not including passport costs.

Timeframes

Timeframes for the application vary, but most people should expect the process to take around 2 years.

For Trevor, the process was a long one. He first contacted the Portuguese Law Firm in the Autumn of 2015 and then, once he had carried out sufficient research, was able to submit his application around a year later. While he was approved in November of 2018, around 3 years after he began the process, it wasn’t until August of 2019 when he received his birth certificate and was able to apply for his passport. 

“Be patient, but also start early,” says Trevor, whose aunt is also now applying. “My aunt is really jealous. Right now a lot of people are rethinking whether it’s worth having a second passport.”

Thankfully for Trevor’s aunt, family members who have the same family tree typically have a faster application process once one family member has already been accepted. Married partners unfortunately don’t get an automatic right to Portuguese citizenship as part of the Sephardic Citizenship scheme but may be able to apply for citizenship via the normal marriage or partner route once their partner obtains their’s.

For Jonah, the process went a lot faster. He was able to get his application expedited to less than 6 months as he was living in London, citing Brexit as the reason. Despite the expedited application, however, with research included the entire process still took around 17 months. 

Impact on Portugal

While some question the scheme’s benefits for Portugal, many applicants develop strong ties to the country. Trevor speaks “passable Portuguese” and dreams of a vacation home there. Jonah, who plans to move to Lisbon, says, “I feel most at home when I’m in Lisbon. I am excited to move to Lisbon next year. It will be a dream come true getting to live my life in Portuguese as my ancestors did.”

The Future of the Program

Spain ended a similar program in 2019, and Portugal might change its law too. Jonah advises, “I don’t think this law will be around forever. Take advantage of this while you can to regain your heritage and have the opportunity to travel in a place that was your home.”

Remember, this process can be challenging, but it’s also a unique opportunity to reclaim your heritage. Good luck on your citizenship journey!