Centro Sefarad-Israel is a Spanish public diplomacy institution created as an inter-administrative consortium to serve as a bridge between Spain and the Jewish world. Established on 18 December 2006 through an agreement involving Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (together with the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation, AECID), the Community of Madrid, and the Madrid City Council, it operates with a cultural and educational mandate rather than as a religious institution.

Its core mission is to foster knowledge of Jewish culture in Spanish civil society, with particular attention to Sephardic heritage as a living component of Spanish culture. In parallel, the institution promotes dialogue and cooperation between Spanish society and Israeli society through mutual cultural knowledge, and it maintains collaborations with Sephardic communities worldwide. This mission is pursued through a steady public program that typically includes lectures, seminars, concerts, book presentations, temporary exhibitions, and film screenings, delivered both onsite and through online formats.

The center’s headquarters are located at Calle Mayor 69, in Madrid’s historic core, within the Palacio de Cañete, a municipal property on the Calle Mayor whose Herrerian-style façade and corner towers have shaped the streetscape since the seventeenth century. Municipal documentation regarding the move to this building often uses the earlier institutional name “Casa Sefarad-Israel.” A 2009 protocol between the Madrid City Council and Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs formalized the installation of the institution’s headquarters in the palace, associating the site with exhibition spaces, a conference room, and library-related services designed to support public access to Jewish and Sephardic cultural knowledge.

A further expansion of its public-facing infrastructure took place through cooperation with the city’s library network. Following a 2021 agreement published in Spain’s official state gazette, the center deposited a specialized collection of 400 titles on Jewish themes, enabling the creation of a dedicated and clearly identifiable section within the Biblioteca Pública Municipal Iván de Vargas. This initiative, publicly referenced as the “Biblioteca Centro Sefarad-Israel / Isaac Revah,” reinforced the institution’s educational role by integrating a curated Judaic and Sephardic collection into a broader municipal public library system.