NUNEZ Origin of surname
Surnames derive from one of many different origins. Sometimes there may be more than one explanation for the same name. This family name is a toponymic (derived from a geographic name of a town, city, region or country). Surnames that are based on place names do not always testify to direct origin from that place, but may indicate an indirect relation between the name-bearer or his ancestors and the place, such as birth place, temporary residence, trade, or family-relatives.
The family name Nunez is based on the town of Nunez in Andalusia, Spain, and can also be related to Nunes, a quarter of Vinhais in Portugal.
Ibn Nunez is documented as a Jewish family name in 15th century Spain. Nunez is recorded in the 16th century in England and Mexico, and in Tunis in 1616. In the 17th century, Nunez is recorded as a Jewish name with Abraham Nunez, mentioned in documents of the French consulate in Tunis the name Nunes is recorded in the 18th century in a 'ketubbah' from Tunis dated May 25, 1797, of Metoura, daughter of Abraham Haim Nunes, and her husband Gabriel, son of Jacob Medina. In the 19th century, Nunes-Vais is recorded as a Jewish name in a list of Jewish families from Tuscany in Tunis dated 1848.
Distinguished bearers of the Jewish family name Nunez include the 16th century leader of the Crypto-Jewish community in England, Hector Nunez (1521-1591).
Miranda de Ebro
(Place)Miranda de Ebro
A town in Castile on the Ebro river in northeastern Spain in the province of Burgos.
History
The town of Miranda de Ebro was the location of one of the oldest Jewish communities in Castile. The fuero (municipal charter) granted to Miranda de Ebro in 1099 by King Alfonso VI (reigned as King of Castile and Leon 1072-1109) gave the Jews equal rights with the Christian and Moorish residents.
In 1290 the community numbered 15 families who paid an annual tax of 3,312 maravedis and 744 maravedis in services.
Jews from Miranda worked in the fields of neighboring villages. They also engaged in lending money to their Christian neighbors. Documentation exists of a long history of conflict in the town between Jewish creditors attempting to collect debts in a timely manner so as to be able to pay their taxes and Christian debtors trying to extend or evade payments, with both sides appealing to the King.
In 1304 Ferdinand IV of Castile (reigned 1295-1312) confirmed the equal rights of Miranda’s Jews with Moors and Christians, in particular with regard to financial liabilities. Ferdinand's ruling was reconfirmed by Alfonso XI (reigned 1312-1350) in 1347 and by Pedro I (reigned 1350-1369) in 1351.
In 1360, at the beginning of the civil war between Pedro I and Henry of Trastamara, Christians in Miranda who resented the Jewish moneylenders of the town took advantage of the anarchy to settle scores. They joined with Henry to attack the Jewish population. Members of the community were massacred and their property stolen. Pedro punished the instigators and the municipal authorities, and executed at least five of the leaders of the riots. Henry, however, finally gained control of the city and in 1367 granted an extension of two years on debt payments owed to Jews and waved all penalties and interest.
The privileges of Jews in Miranda, as enumerated by the authorities in Burgos in 1453, included the right to own synagogues, to participate in the tax apportionment, and to work on Sundays at home or in closed workshops. In addition, they were exempted from paying dues to the cathedral.
In 1474 Henry IV of Castile (reigned 1454-1474) commissioned a Jew, Jacob Ibn Nunez, who was his court physician and chief judge, to apportion the taxes that the aljamas (self-governing communities of Jews) in his dominions had to pay. A system of taxation was introduced whereby several neighboring communities were joined with Miranda and their joint tax was fixed at 2,000 maravedis. In 1485 the Jews were required to pay a levy of 107 castellanos to support the war with Granada.
The Jewish community of Miranda ceased to exist with the expulsion from Spain in 1492. The synagogue of Miranda was handed over to the municipal council. The remains of the synagogue are preserved in a house in Calle de la Fuenta (no. 18). The Jewish quarter was located in and around the present Calle de la Independencia (formerly de los Judios).
Holocaust Period
Between 1940-1947, Miranda de Ebro was the site of Spain’s central concentration camp for foreign nationals. It began as a prison for anti-fascist volunteers who came to fight on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, but after the outbreak of World War II became a place to incarcerate men trying to flee from occupied Europe. Spain, because it was officially neutral, although very sympathetic to Hitler, was an escape route and way-station for those attempting to reach Britain, the Americas or North Africa.
Among those who ended up at Miranda were Jews, especially after the fall of France in 1942 and the round-up of the Jewish population there. Some of the refugees were Central European Jews who had settled in France in the 1920s and 30s and others were from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. In the camp they were subjected to cold, disease, violence, overcrowding, bad food and lack of hygiene. Some were returned by the Spanish to the control of the Gestapo.
A Coruna
(Place)A Coruna
Spanish: La Coruna, Coruniya
Atlantic seaport city in N.W. Spain
21st Century
The A Coruna Jewish community was established in 2017 with the Ner Tamid synagogue. The old town of A Coruna where Jews once lived has a Synagogue St.
In the Spanish city of Tudela the La Coruna Bible is placed in a museum housing a 13-14th century synagogue. La Coruna Bible was written in Galicia, Spain in 1476.
The Kennicoty Bible is the most important religious Jewish manuscript of the Middle Ages in Galicia, Spain and its original is kept in Oxford. Dated in La Coruna in 1476, this bible comprises 922 pages of Hebrew writing of Moses Ibn Zabarah with beautiful illustrations by Josef Ibn Hayyim. It was bought by Benjamin Kennicott in 1771, the namesteak.
A grave headstone from 10th-11th from A Coruna is on view in the Jewish Information Center of Galicia part of an exposition on Galician Jewish communities.
History
Fragments of tombstones found in A Coruna show that Jews lived there in the 11th and 12th centuries. A street called Sinagoga is still to be found in A Coruna. The Jewish community evidently began to expand in the 15th century along with other centers in northern Castile as Jews moved there from the south. The Jews of A Coruna engaged in maritime trade with Castilian and Aragonese ports. In 1451 the community contributed 300 gold pieces toward ransoming a Jew of Murcia who had been taken captive. A tax of 1,800 maravedis was collected from the community in A Coruna and others in the vicinity in 1474 by Jacob Aben Nunez. One of the most beautiful illuminated Hebrew manuscripts in existence, the so-called Kennicott Bible in the Bodleian library, Oxford, was completed in A Coruna, for Isaac, son of Don Solomon de Braga, in 1486. The A Coruna community apparently flourished until the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.