The Jewish documentary presence on the island of Mallorca dates back to the 5th century, although some authors point to the possibility that they had arrived earlier. The Hebrew community knew how to adapt, not without great difficulties, to the different colonizations of the Island. For example, after the Islamic conquest of the 10th century, not a few Jews became part of the high official body of the new Muslim administration, and perhaps this Explain that many of them lived in the vicinity of the Valí Palace (now Almudaina Palace).
When Jaime I assaulted the city and conquered the island, he did not attack the Jewish community, on the contrary, he protected it - one hundred years before (1115) his great-great-grandfather the Count of Barcelona (Ramón Berenguer III) had already done so during the assault and razia of the Mallorcan capital– and made use of the intellectual training of many of its members. The monarch granted safe-conduct to all foreign Jews who wanted to move to live in Mallorca. The Jews participated, both in the distribution of assets of the royal portion, as well as that of the Count of Roussillon, Nuño Sanç.
From the first they received several properties, among which the extensive area adjacent to the Almudaina Palace stood out, an area that the documentation calls Almudayne judeorum, which is nothing more than the site that at the end of the 13th century the Dominicans would occupy - paradoxes of history - build your convent. The historian Margalida Bernat places the synagogue of that call (or Jewish neighborhood) in the place where today the Balearic Parliament is located (in Palau Reial street), which began to function in the middle of 1200.
From Nuño Sanç they received properties located in the area whose main axes were the current streets of Jaume II (formerly Bastaixos, and more formerly des Segell) and Sant Bartomeu (formerly Jueus). This neighborhood was known as the Callet, or, as the chronicler Vicenç Mut called it centuries later, the Call Menor. This neighborhood also had a synagogue, which Bernat locates in the current Callejón de la Reixa, at the beginning of Calle de Sant Bartomeu.
During the years after the conquest, the life of the Jewish community - the aljama - did not suffer major shocks, perhaps some internal disputes between the autochthonous Hebrews and the newcomers. It seems that the problems began to arise with the first babbling of the new Majorcan diocese, which did not make great efforts to hide its misgivings towards the Jews. For this reason, Jaime II, around the year 1300 - a key moment in which the monarch gave a definitive impulse to the organization and structuring of the kingdom of Mallorca -, advised by Bishop Ponç Desjardí, ordered the Jews to move to live in a new area of the city, further from the epicenter of the city.
The Hebrew neighbors of Callet or Call Menor were also included in this transfer. The new neighborhood, the result of the union of the two old ones, was called Call Mayor, and was located in the Levantine part of the city, in the vocata part of Templum et Calatrava. This was articulated from some main road axes currently identified with the streets of: Sol, Montesión, Posada de Monserrat and Sant Alonso. As in the previous ones, a wall –murum grossum– was built around it that delimited it. Its interior was accessed through four doors: the Main Gate, located at the intersection of Padre Nadal, Sol, Montesión and Santa Clara streets; the Puerta de L'Aberaudor del Temple, located at the confluence of Sol and Pelleters streets, in front of the Temple castle; the Puerta de las Torres Llevaneres, which was at the height of the central part of the current convent of Ses Jerònimes - whose street, by the way, has been preserved fossilized inside the convent -; and finally, the Puerta de Santa Clara, in front of the portal of said monastery. From the creation of the Call Mayor, all Jews had the obligation to live and sleep there, although they were able to keep their business premises outside the enclosure.
The Jews had a political, administrative and social organization parallel to the Christian one: the aljama. It fully regulated their lives. Organized hierarchically, it had the council of elders - normally made up of seven venerable ones - as the institution of maximum authority. The synagogue was a crucial point in the life of the Citizen Jews. It was the place of worship and teaching. Although in principle only one synagogue was allowed to function, the Call, throughout its complicated history, had three. The first to be built was located on the site of the current Montesión church –the main synagogue–.
Despite having rather discreet dimensions, it stood out for its magnificent decoration and packaging. Jaime III defined it as de curiosam et valde formosam. There is no time to discuss the vicissitudes that this temple suffered throughout its history, only to say that its use was intermittent. Finally, after the assault on the Call in 1391, it was bought by Jaume Despuig, who converted it into a Christian temple under the dedication of Our Lady of Montesión, and that is how the Jesuits found it in the 16th century. A second synagogue was built on the current site of the Old Seminary, in the part facing Posada de Montserrat street, although it was used as a synagogue for no more than fifteen years, as it was also destroyed in the assault of 1391.
Finally, a third synagogue –the nova synagogue– was built thanks to the testamentary donation of Aaron Mani (1370) who wrote the will that a synagogue be built in his house. It is not known when it was erected, but it is known that it also disappeared after the assault. Despite the brutality of the events of 1391, the conversions were not as massive as has been said on more than one occasion.
The Call, enduring great calamities and humiliations, was able to survive for about forty more years. Undoubtedly, the arrival of some 150 Portuguese Jewish immigrants helped their survival. It was that group that bought the Aaron Maní synagogue and rehabilitated it again. Its location was in the current Pelleteria street, at the height of the Forn d'en Miquel. It lasted a few years, because in 1435, all Majorcan Jews were forced to convert to Christianity. Some were able to flee, while for others another ordeal began that would continue for centuries. Only great people like the Jew are capable of resisting so much and having so much hope ... as can be glimpsed in poems like that of Marian Aguiló in Albada: L'estrella més pura / poruga ja guaita / tremola agradosa / dellà la muntanya./ Benhaja l'estrella, l'estrella de l'alba! ...
Jewish resistance in Mallorca. The unique case of the Chueta
Since the full Middle Ages, the Church has observed with concern the increase of Jews who were settling in Spain (Sepharad), especially in the cities. The current historiography does not exaggerate when considering the medieval Sepharad as the largest Hebraic center in Europe. As is known, the process led, already at the time of the Catholic Monarchs, to the creation of the Holy Inquisition and the subsequent fateful decree of forced conversion of the Jews, causing the exodus of thousands of Hebrews to Portugal, Turkey, Amsterdam, Morocco. , Liorna… In the case of Majorca, this calamity had advanced more than half a century, since in 1435 the Law of Moses had expired, and its belief and observance were prohibited throughout the Kingdom.
Obviously, a decree cannot cause someone to stop believing in what they believe. By this I mean that those forced to be baptized, all, in their most intimate being, remained Jews. Now, from here on, these converts behaved differently: some fled to places where they could remain Jews freely; Others allowed their descendants to be assimilated and diluted among the "old" Christian Majorcans (this is the case of the Duzays, the Bonets, or Jews who had been baptized adopting Christian surnames such as Muntaner, Morro, Berard, Sureda, Moyà ...). These, in a few generations, were fully integrated among Majorcan Christians, coming to completely forget their Jewish origins. A third and final option for converts was to remain in Mallorca but remain faithful to Judaism, yes, in the strictest privacy of the family or small supra-family group, hiding their beliefs from the rest of society. This third option was followed by more than a few convert families who, despite the passing of the years, were not assimilated into Christian society.
This group, by persevering in Judaism, did not perform "mixed" marriages and, therefore, continued to marry exclusively among those faithful to the faith of Moses. At the same time, they had been able to inherit the properties that their ancestors had saved after the assault on the Call of 1391. These buildings were located in the old and small Jewish quarter of Callet (the neighborhood of the current streets of Jaume II, Sant Bartomeu, Bosseria i Argenteria). This last group of Judaizers, who over the years will be called chueta (from Catalan Jueu, Juetó, Xuetó, Xueta), always felt that they were part of the Israel people, the chosen people, depositary of the Law granted by God to Moses. on Mount Horeb in Sinai.
And although, as has already been said, this whole matter was handled with the utmost discretion, the rest of the citizens did not take long to realize the existence of these “parallel lives”.
Despite this, as Francesc Riera points out, during the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries, the inquisitorial persecution of the Jews remained half asleep. In the daily life of the city, the groups kept their distance, but in a more or less peaceful way. Other authors, such as Ángela Selke, point out as one of the causes of this pacification, the corruption of some inquisitors, viceroys or royal attorneys who allowed themselves to be bribed by the Chueta community.
Whatever it whatever, this situation changed radically after 1672, at which time the inquisitorial machinery set in motion a process that involved a large number of residents of the Carrer del Segell (that is to say, Callet). The causes of this change in the rudder must be sought, basically, in the confluence of two circumstances: on the one hand the religious aspect and on the other the economic one. The religious because, far from being extinct, Judaism on the island was being strengthened thanks to contact with Jewish communities abroad; and on the other hand, because some Chueta families were making a hole for themselves among the Palma oligarchy. This raised suspicions on the part of the Inquisition and the urban patriciate.
Without elaborating further on the subject, the consequences were mass arrests and interrogations, and the imprisonment of an important part of the Chueta community. Apart from all this, most of his assets were confiscated. The accusations, brought about by witnesses such as merchants, maids or malsines, were very clear: "those in Calle del Sagell were as Jewish as those in Liorna." They were accused of keeping the precepts of Judaism: they observed the Sabbath, they “rabbinated” the animals (that is, they killed them following the Jewish rite), they celebrated the Hebrew Passover (Pesach), on Fridays, at the beginning of the Sabbath they recited the blessing of wine (Barahá)… The process ended in 1679 with the result of 218 chueta sentenced to pecuniary penalties, and imprisonment, but no one was executed. All of them were ridiculed and suffered public derision by being forced to walk the streets of Palma with the Sambenitos. This trial meant the ruin of many Judaizers, at the same time that it led to the escape by drop of some of them from the Island, to be able to freely integrate into Jewish communities abroad. It is necessary to remember that the Jews were prohibited from leaving the Island since medieval times, to leave Mallorca they needed a pass that very few were able to get.
The community that remained in Palma, despite the great repression of the 1670s, continued to persevere in the faith of the Hebrews. The Inquisition suspected it. The situation in the late 80s of the seventeenth century became untenable for the Chueta, so they planned a group escape. As is known, the plan was ruined due to a storm that did not allow the English ship to set sail that was supposed to lead them to freedom. 88 people were arrested, of whom 33 were executed with a bludgeon and then burned and three were burned alive for remaining faithful in the faith: Rabbi Rafel Valls and the brothers Rafel and Caterina Tarongí.
With this macabre act a new nightmare began: the brutal discrimination against the fifteen surnames that made up the Chueta community at that time, discrimination that would extend until the last decades of the 20th century. After five hundred years of resistance, today, in Mallorca, some Chueta have returned to Judaism and meet on Fridays and Saturdays in the Palma synagogue just as their ancestors did centuries ago.
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