IT CANNOT BE DETERMINED exactly when exiles who had managed to find a place to settle in Portugal began to consider returning to their places of origin in Spain. They knew that return was possible only following conversion to Christianity, and that returning to Spain raised problems regarding property that had been left behind. For example, members of some families agreed to convert to Christianity and return, while other members of those families had remained in Spain and property had been deposited with them. In many instances, property had been sold by the deportees for less than half its value, and the returnees wished to recover it. How would the residents who had remained in place respond to the returnees, and how would they receive them? These are only a few of the issues. In many instances the parents of deportees died after reaching Portugal, for the conditions there caused considerable mortality, and then, in their despair, the children sought to return to their former place of residence, where they hoped to rehabilitate themselves. As Rabbi Abraham the son of Rabbi Solomon Halevy Bakarat eloquently lamented: ‘and they wearied of bearing their burden, and countless numbers returned to the kingdom of Castile and forfeited their honour. And this happened to those of them who went to the kingdom of Portugal and to those who came to the kingdom of Fez.’

Moreover, the returnees were people of property who wished to take up the life they had led before going into exile, though now in Christian guise. Certainly the proximity of Portugal to Spain also encouraged them to return, for far fewer of those who went by sea to North Africa returned, and those who went to the East did not return at all.

We do not know when they began seeking ways of returning to Spain. The Edict of Expulsion stated explicitly that those who returned would be condemned to death. An opportunity for return was created by the decree of the king and queen issued in Barcelona on 10 November 1492 in favour of three physicians, whose names are written on the back: maestre Lope, a physician; Rabbi Yose the son of Rabbi Jacob, the physician of Enrique IV; and also the physician Be[]r son of Yom Tov, a resident of Madrid.