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On This Day — July 30, 1492 Spain ordered the expulsion of its Jews. The Alhambra Decree gave roughly 200,000 Jews four months to convert or leave. Most chose exile. Tens of thousands died on the roads and at sea. Some captains took their payment and threw them overboard. Others were murdered by brigands searching their bodies for swallowed jewels. Those who fled to Portugal faced forced baptism or further expulsion. The survivors became the Sephardim. Their language, Ladino, carried a Spanish-Hebrew mix into new lands for centuries. The Inquisition continued hunting “conversos," Jews who had been forced to convert but were still suspected of secretly practicing Judaism. For the first time, Jewishness was treated as something unchangeable because it was in the Jews' blood. One of the richest and most accomplished Jewish communities in the world was destroyed almost overnight. It took Spain until 1968 to formally revoke the decree.