Why Spain’s Hostility Toward Israel Runs So Deep

Since the October 7 massacre and the war in Gaza, Spanish hostility toward Israel has reached record levels, cutting across both the left and the right. The article says this is visible in the current government, which includes radical left parties, but also in the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Spain was the last Western country to recognize Israel, doing so only in 1986, and even then only because the European Union made it a condition for membership.

Researchers describe the phenomenon as “antisemitism without Jews.” Its roots, the article says, go back to 1492, when Spain’s monarchs expelled the Jewish community in the Edict of Expulsion. For centuries afterward, Spain lived without Jews, while laws of “Christian purity of blood” targeted descendants of Jews. With no direct contact and continued persecution of descendants, antisemitic stereotypes spread widely.

Those stereotypes remain embedded in language and custom. The term “Judiada,” originally meaning an act committed by a Jew, now means malice or betrayal in Spanish and is listed in the dictionary. In León, in northern Spain, there is even a pre-Easter drink called “Matar Judíos,” or “to kill Jews,” and people ask how many Jews someone “killed,” meaning how many cups were drunk.

The article says Franco also promoted anti-Jewish ideas, including a conspiracy theory about Jews and Freemasons allegedly causing Spain’s international isolation. He drew closer to Arab states and warned of the “Zionist danger.” Under diplomatic pressure, he symbolically annulled the expulsion, but kept an anti-Israel and anti-Zionist line. Today, according to scholars, the absence of Jews from Spain and the country’s closeness to Arab states have made extreme anti-Israel positions easier to adopt than elsewhere in the West.