Spain Welcoming Those It Ousted in 1492 : History: Jews and Muslims--enemies of different stripes in Columbus’ day--were booted out by Catholic monarchs in the same year.

A prideful Spain welcomes Arabs and Jews here this morning with the same enthusiasm as when it expelled them both 499 years ago.

Whatever history the Middle East antagonists make at a T-shaped table in an old palace here, the fact of their encounter in Madrid is one of history’s jokes.

Jews and Muslims, enemies of different stripes but equally hated, were booted from Roman Catholic Spain in the same year: 1492. They left amid war and religious hatred.

Now, for Spain, their return in search of peace symbolizes the new international stature of a young democracy after decades of isolation in dictatorship.

And it is a prelude to yearlong celebrations in Spain marking the 500th anniversary of a fulcrum year in world history--Christopher Columbus and all of that.

For the Jews and the Arabs, the conference is an official homecoming of sorts in a country where their legacy runs deep despite centuries of official prohibition.

“I think it would be difficult today to find a Spaniard who does not have some Jewish or Arab heritage in his ancestry. They are in our language, our culture and our blood,” said Jose Maria Jover, a professor emeritus of history at Madrid’s Complutense University.

Today’s Spanish capital was once known as Madjirith to its Arab rulers.

It is, in fact, democratic Spain’s evenhanded ties with Israel and the Arab world that made Madrid an acceptable venue to both as the United States shopped for a conference site.

Spain has long had good ties in the Arab world, although under Generalissimo Francisco Franco, the Spanish were officially chary of Israel. In 1986, the government of Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez established full diplomatic links with Israel and also granted official status to the Palestine Liberation Organization. Since then, Gonzalez has called repeatedly for peace talks.

The Madrid imperative asserted itself as other European cities were either rejected by one or more of the conference participants or were unable through prior international commitments to accommodate it. Spanish newspapers say the idea of conducting the conference here was first broached by President Bush to a visiting King Juan Carlos I during a recent Camp David weekend.

Gonzalez--whose nominally Socialist but emphatically free-market government has brought unprecedented prosperity and international recognition to Spain after decades of Francoist introspection--jumped at the chance. Thus, a conference that normally would have taken months to prepare opens less than two weeks after it was conceived.

Now Spain can talk of little else. Hitherto all-consuming preparations for next summer’s Olympics in Barcelona and a world’s fair in Seville are now back-page grist.

One Madrid newspaper calls the conference “a success for the king.” Others proclaim that a troika of Bush, Gonzalez and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev will forge peace in the Middle East.

A poll by the newspaper ABC found that 77% thought it was a good idea for Spain to host the conference, 60% thought it would improve their country’s international image, 21% thought the Arabs had the best argument and 12% supported Israel’s viewpoint.

Every publication in town bristles with scorecard maps telling citizens where all the players are--and how to avoid getting trapped in the traffic jams their presence generates. One radio show satire had Bush telling a Gonzalez preoccupied with a general strike in the region of Asturias: “Have somebody else worry about that. It’s only domestic stuff.”

Madrid Mayor Jose Maria Alvarez del Manzano has bought newspaper and billboard space for an official peace communique, affirming that “the choice of Madrid is testimony of the recognition of its open character and its vocation as a messenger of peace.”

Yes, there is a downside. The proud mayor urges citizens to “collaborate with acceptance, tolerance and comprehension” when faced by any “eventual disturbances” caused by the conference. What that means is: Don’t drive in Madrid this week. Walking isn’t much fun either: Crisscrossing VIP motorcades, sirens blaring, are not only dizzying but dangerous.

Among Spain’s riveted conference-watchers are uncounted descendants of the Moors who once ruled and the Jews who once lived peaceably in their midst. Officially, there are only about 12,000 Jews in Spain today and about 200,000 Muslims--most in the small Spanish colonies of Ceuta and Melilla on the coast of North Africa.

“Spain’s relations with Jews and Muslims were painfully passionate for many centuries,” noted Complutense University historian Jose Cepeda.

After the Moorish rule ended, many Muslims remained in southern Spain, he noted, eventually becoming absorbed into the culture and dominant Catholicism. By the end of the 15th Century, as many as 300,000 Jews had at least nominally converted and passed into Spanish history as the conversos. Tomas de Torquemada, father of the Inquisition, came from a converso family.

In 1492, Torquemada persuaded Ferdinand and Isabel, “the Catholic kings,” to expel all Jews who would not be baptized. That same year, Spanish forces captured the last Moorish stronghold at Granada, ending centuries of Arab rule over what is now southern Spain.

As Columbus prepared to sail, about 170,000 Jews also left, many to lands of the Ottoman Empire where their descendants are still Jewish and still speak Spanish.

In Spain, descendants of converso families figured prominently in the “Golden Century” of the 1500s. They include the Catholic saints Teresa of Avila and St. John of God as well as Diego Lainez, second father general of the Jesuits, and Bartolome de las Casas, historian of the Indies and defender of the American Indians.

Cepeda said that Jews began drifting back to Spain from Portugal in the 17th Century. Like the Muslims who never left, they kept a low profile. “Officially, I guess you could say there were no Jews and no Muslims in Spain until the constitution of 1869 established freedom of religion,” Cepeda said.

Today, 499 years after the fact, they’re all back. And Spain is glad to see them.