On March 11, Spain became the first European country to withdraw its ambassador from Israel. For many Spanish Jews, the gesture was more than diplomatic theatre – it revived anxieties about a past they had hoped was long behind them.
For decades, Spain seemed to be moving in the opposite direction. The death of dictator Francisco Franco, the establishment of relations with Israel in 1986, and the law granting citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled in the 15th century all suggested a slow but steady normalisation of Jewish life. It was tempting to believe that Spain’s centuries-old anti-Jewish reflexes were finally fading. Few imagined how abruptly that optimism would collapse after the October 7 attacks and the Gaza war.
Antisemitism has surged across Western Europe, but Spain’s reaction has been distinctive – sharper, louder, and more politically mainstream. Three structural factors help explain why the country has become unusually fertile ground for the resurgence of anti-Jewish narratives.
First, Spain stands at the margins of Europe’s culture of memory. Unlike Germany, France, or even Italy, Spain never integrated its treatment of Jews – during the Holocaust or long before – into its contemporary moral consciousness. As philosopher Reyes Mate has argued, Spain has produced historical accounts of its Jewish past, but not a moral reckoning. The result is a persistent vacuum: since the transition to democracy there has been little reflection on the ignorance and prejudices that have shaped attitudes toward Jews, Jewishness, and the State of Israel.
While political actors at the centre and moderate right have grown more aware of this legacy, the blind spot has remained entrenched on the left, especially to the left of the Socialist Party PSOE, where Soviet-style antizionism has long been an unquestioned ideological pillar. Paradoxically, the most conspicuous heirs of the Francoist framework that saw the State of Israel in a light beset by traditional and modern anti-Jewish stereotypes are parties such a Podemos and the electoral platform Sumar, which is currently part of the Spanish coalition government.
Second, the current PSOE government’s dependence on this antizionist left has pulled these narratives into the political mainstream. In the immediate aftermath of the October 7 massacres, ministers from Podemos (coalition partner of the Socialist Party between 2021 and 2023) accused Israel of genocide while bodies of the Israeli victims of the Hamas attacks were still being counted. Slogans like “From the River to the Sea”, heard at rallies across Europe, were amplified in Spain not by fringe activists but by government officials such as Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz. Jone Belarra, the Podemos General Secretary and former Minister of Social Rights, captured the party’s stance in a striking Christmas Eve 2025 post on X: “In these days when everyone aspires to good, Israel embodies absolute evil. Stopping them is the fundamental political task”.
As the war in Gaza intensified, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez recognised the political capital he could gain with his left-wing allies and a large portion of the Spanish electorate by positioning himself as Europe’s most outspoken critic of Israel. His decisions followed accordingly: endorsing a boycott of the La Vuelta cycling race in Spain over the participation of an Israeli team, pushing for Spain’s withdrawal from Eurovision, and for sanctions against Israel in international fora.
Since the start of the Iran war, Sánchez has revived the No a la guerra (“no to war”) slogan associated with the 2003 anti-Iraq War movement – a political turning point in modern Spain that contributed to the collapse of the conservative government of José María Aznar. “No to war” is again an opportunistic stance that taps into widespread animosity toward US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu but also reflects a broader worldview that obscures what Iran and its proxies represent for the State of Israel and Jewish communities globally.
The link between this rhetoric and the unacknowledged undercurrents of Spanish antisemitism are difficult to ignore. The decision to permanently withdraw the Spanish ambassador to Israel, taken while Iranian rockets were hitting Israeli cities, crystallised this logic – a unique action directed at one country alone.
Continuing in this vein, the Spanish government summoned on Monday Israel's chargé d'affaires in Madrid after overzealous Israeli police decided to block Palm Sunday mass at the Holy Sepulchre amid fears that Iranian missiles could strike the church. The episode – overblown and dismissive of the security restrictions imposed by the war – echoes the logic behind the aforementioned Christmas tweet. Together, they show how quickly deep-seated anti-Jewish prejudices and religious sentiments can be mobilised when criticising Israel.
Third, Spain lacks a Jewish critical mass capable of countering these narratives. With a community estimated at only 40,000 to 50,000 people, Jewish voices remain largely absent from the country’s cultural and intellectual mainstream. Spanish Jewish authors are scarce in bookstores while the latest titles by antizionist writers like Ilan Pappe or Peter Beinart are widely available. At public universities, holding an open conference on Middle East politics that feature Jewish or Israeli voices not aligned with militant antizionism carries a high risk of disruption or cancellation. Specialists in Arabic and Islamic Studies are prominent as media commentators of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while Israeli or mainstream Jewish perspectives are much rarely featured. Apart from small but strident pro‑Israel groups aligned with the far right – an issue that warrants its own article – few moderate, well‑informed voices from within the community reach the mainstream.
Only a day after the government announced the withdrawal of its ambassador from Israel, an independent report by Networks Overcoming Antisemitism (NOA), outlining the country’s challenges, was presented at the Sefarad-Israel Centre in Madrid. The event brought together government officials, academics, and Jewish organisations. Yet the central contradiction hung in the air: how can a government combat antisemitism while simultaneously empowering political actors who help normalise it?
Few believe meaningful progress is possible without a shift in the government’s approach to Israel. Political incentives certainly run in the opposite direction. And so Spain’s Jewish community finds itself trapped in a double bind, working with well-intended officials tasked with fighting antisemitism while those same officials share a political space with some of its most persistent enablers.
Alejandro Baer is a sociologist at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). He is the author of Antisemitismo. El eterno retorno de la cuestión judía (Antisemitism. The eternal return of the Jewish question)
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