I am finding it difficult to understand an apparent obsession with Portuguese and Spanish citizenship. I fully support and respect all efforts to discover Sephardic heritage from descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jews. I have done this for a very long time and am fortunate to have been able to trace my Sephardic heritage back to the 12the century and to have uncovered notable ancestors from the 16th century to today. But pursuing citizenship unless it brings practical benefits, perhaps to non EEC citizens, is another matter. I was born in London to a Portuguese Sephardic father and an English Ashkenazi mother of Polish and Russian parents. I have British nationality even though I was brought up in Lisbon from a baby to 12 years old and could have easily opted for Portuguese nationality or dual nationality. I rejected Portuguese nationality because in the 1960s when I reached 18 I would have faced compulsorily military service and been sent to fight a cruel and unjust colonial war in Africa on behalf of a fascist government. A small number of Portuguese Sephardic Jews suffered this fate and some died as a result. Needless to say nearly all my male contemporaries of military age quickly left Portugal if they had any family abroad.Whilst I understand why the two Iberian States are now offering citizenship to a restricted number of people to make up for their previous persecution of Jews, Jews should be careful of getting immersed in battles for citizenship. My inspiration on this issue is my dear maternal Ashkenazi grandmother, who escaped a pogrom in Krakov Poland and was a refugee in London at 13 years old with her family. She hated Poland and its anti Semitic population and as soon as she could she renounced Polish nationality and because o the anti Semitic laws in Britain such as the Aliens Act of 1905 she could not become British. She then became a Stateless Person and remained so until the day she died. Even when Britain, decades later, offers long term residents from Eastern Europe British nationality, she refused saying " You didn't want me when I needed you, now I can do without it". She visited us in Portugal when I was a child with papers which stated that she was a citizen of the World, resident in the UK with the right to return to the UK. She loved Britain, its people and living in London but of Governments she was naturally suspicious.