Jews and New Christians in the Iberian Empires in a Global Context, 1492–1800

When the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria sailed from Palos on the morning of August 3, 1492, so did, according to tradition, the last vessels carrying expelled Jews out of Spain, a country that had had a larger Jewish population than all the others in medieval Europe combined.¹ A related account asserts that the three caravels were set to sail a day earlier, that Columbus postponed the departure so it would not coincide with Tish’a B’Av, a somber and inauspicious day in the Jewish calendar, and that this is part of the evidence for the Admiral of the