“I call it a law of return,” he says, “allowing Jews to get back a passport that they normally would be holding if their ancestors had not been forced to leave. It’s the closing of a circle of reconciliation between the Jews and Portugal.”

Since 2015 (when the laws came into effect) around 30,000 people have applied to the Ministry of Justice. Out of them about 25% - or just over 7,000 - have already got Portuguese nationality. The largest group of applicants is from Israel, then Turkey and Brazil.

One of those who knows most about the motivations of applicants is Yoram Zara, an Israeli immigration lawyer.

He says large numbers of Jewish Turks applied early on because of political instability at home. “They were worried about their own well-being; about Turkey becoming less democratic; more Islamic and less predictable. They wanted an insurance of sorts.”

As for the Israeli applicants, Yoram says often they apply because “an EU passport is a bit of a status symbol – to walk through the short line at border control”. But he also adds a more serious point: “It wasn’t that long ago that Jews were persecuted and if you had the right papers you could escape your destiny. So there’s a feeling that having another identity can’t hurt.”

What about Brexit and British applicants?

“The day the referendum results were announced my phone didn’t stop ringing and the emails didn’t stop landing in my inbox,” says Yoram. “It was a kind of panic.” He says it’s calmed down a lot now.

Gabriel Steinhardt also says that interest from the UK has not been that high: “The numbers are relatively small - just 1 or 2%. So we’re talking hundreds, not tens of thousands”.