2 Spanish Cities Reverse BDS Motions Following Legal Action

Madrid, Spain Image by iStock

By JTA August 28, 2018

(JTA) — Two municipalities in Spain rescinded their adhesion to the campaign to boycott Israel following legal action by a Madrid-based organization devoted to defending the Jewish state.

The city council of Villarrobledo, a city of 25,000 that is located 100 miles southeast of Madrid and is known for its wine industry, scrapped last week a motion passed in April that declared the municipality to be a part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, or BDS.

The move on August 21 followed a motion by the ACOM group, which in recent years has promoted the scrapping, annulment or suspension of 26 motions to boycott Israel by Spanish municipalities.

This week, the city council of Sagunto, a city of 64,000 residents located 200 miles east of Madrid, near the port city of Valencia, also reversed a motion it had passed on June 26, declaring it a “space free of Israeli apartheid.” The reversal followed a warning by ACOM that failure to scrap the motion will result in legal action, the group said.

Tribunals in Spain, including the nation’s Supreme Court in two of its rulings, have voided more than a dozen motions passed by municipalities when ruling on motions by ACOM and other groups. Other municipalities voluntarily scrapped their boycott motions under threat of legal action by ACOM.

Despite many victories over the BDS movement in Spain, the country still has dozens of municipalities supporting BDS, more than in any other EU member nation.

Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at fisher@forward.com, or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO