The Catalan Route
The Catalan Route of Jewish Heritage is as complex as it is revealing. For centuries, Jewish communities were an integral part of Catalan society, deeply woven into its social, cultural, and economic life. Periods of remarkable intellectual and cultural flourishing gave rise to great thinkers, traders, and scholars—until a long century of repression brought this world to a dramatic end with the Edict of Expulsion of 1492.
What followed was a time marked by dispersion, exile, forced conversion, and secrecy. Jewish presence endured in fragments and silences until the early twentieth century, when the first modern Jewish community on the Iberian Peninsula was founded in Barcelona. Today, across cities, borderlands, mountain towns, and coastal villages, a diverse and active community is reconnecting with this layered legacy.
Through a carefully curated series of cultural experiences and day trips along the Catalan Route, we delve into the splendour of historic Jewish quarters—known locally as Calls—while also confronting episodes of persecution, rupture, and survival. The route invites us to revisit key moments of medieval, modern, and contemporary history, including the upheavals of the Spanish Civil War, the impact of both World Wars, the years of dictatorship, and the return of democracy.
Our approach is open, inclusive, and pluralistic. Rather than offering a single narrative, we create spaces for dialogue, co-creation, and critical engagement. Visitors are invited not only to observe, but to participate—to question inherited myths, explore intersecting identities, and reflect on the contradictions that shape Jewish and Catalan history alike. To explore the Catalan Route of Jewish Heritage is to become an active protagonist in a millennium-old story—one that continues to unfold in the present.
