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The Sephardi world today is two-headed. About 3-4 million Israelis claim Sephardi or Mizrahi descent (roughly half the Jewish population in the broad sense, including North African families), making them a demographic engine of the country. Outside Israel, a smaller but proud diaspora of ~750K runs historic synagogues from London to New York to Curaçao. In 2015 Spain and Portugal both passed citizenship laws for descendants of expelled Jews, a symbolic restitution that triggered ~150,000 applications and produced one of the strangest reverse-migration debates in modern Jewish history.
Cultural note, When Spain announced its 2015 law, Israeli reaction was mixed. Some saw it as overdue justice, others as a Trojan horse: "they expelled us in 1492, now they want our money and our talent back?" In practice most applicants kept Israeli citizenship and used Spanish/Portuguese passports for EU access. The Portuguese law became famous for one applicant in particular, Roman Abramovich, whose 2021 acceptance triggered a parliamentary scandal and a 2022 tightening of the criteria.
Israeli Sephardi Demographics
Authoridad Nasionala del Ladino
Spanish 2015 Citizenship Law
Portuguese 2015 Citizenship Law
Sephardi Diaspora Synagogues & Communities
The Reverse Migration Debate
A short text-block exchange capturing the live debate inside the Israeli Sephardi community when the 2015 laws opened.