Spain Guide
Catalunya
The Jewish Quarter
Carrer de la Força leads past what's considered the best-preserved Jewish quarter in Western Europe. A Jewish community of 25 families was well established in Girona by the late ninth century, with an initial settlement near the cathedral later shifting up to Carrer de la Força, which follows the course of the Roman Via Augusta. With a population of over three hundred at its peak, the new quarter became known as the Call or the Aljama, forming an autonomous municipality within Girona, under royal protection in exchange for payment of tribute.
Cabbalistic scholarship thrived here under the leadership of Rabbi Moisés Ben Nahman (born 1194; Nahmánides or Bonastruc ça Porta in Catalan), and members of the community excelled in the professions – commerce, property speculation and banking – reserved for them. But from the thirteenth century onwards, Gironan Jews suffered systematic and escalating persecution; in 1391, a mob stormed the Call and killed forty of its residents, after which the neighbourhood became a restrictive ghetto like those of northern Europe, until the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.
The Aljama wasn't allowed to open windows, or more than one door, onto c/de la Força, so the inmates created a maze-like, multi-level complex of rooms, stairways and all-important courtyards, which in the final century of Jewish life here contained the synagogue, kosher slaughterhouse and communal baths. The Centre Bonastruc ça Porta at no. 8 comprises much of this, plus a café, small bookshop, and the Museu d'Història dels Jueus (Mon– Sat 10am–8pm, Nov– April until 6pm, Sun 10am–3pm; €2). This, disappointingly, is long on speculative archeology and short on substantive exhibits, these being principally a room full of enormous grave steles from the Bou d'Or cemetery on Montjuïc hill northeast of town, their fervent Hebrew inscriptions the most definitive legacy of Jewish life here. Temporary expositions are apt to be more rewarding.