Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

El Al Shuns Spanish Tourist Mecca Over Anti-Israel Push

— A city in northern Spain that is trying to increase its inbound tourist traffic lost a direct flight connection with Israel over its symbolic support for boycotting the Jewish state, a Spanish newspaper reported.

The Spain branch of El Al for months had negotiated with tourist officials from the autonomous region of Galicia over opening a direct line between its capital, Santiago de Compostella, and Tel Aviv, but the talks failed following the passing in November of a nonbinding motion at the city council in favor of boycotting Israel, La Voz de Galicica reported Wednesday.

Tourism is a major source of income in Galicia, where 18.2 percent of the workforce are unemployed, along with 43 percent of workers under 25. The local government has invested millions of euros into creating new jobs in the tourist sector and, at the same time, attracting international tourists to the region’s various attractions – including the Catholic pilgrimage route known as the Way of St. James, which passes through Santiago. It attracts more than 250,000 pilgrims and tourists annually to Santiago.

Alejandro Sánchez-Brunete, a member of Santiago’s city council for the center-right Popular Party, accused the far-left party that last year won Santiago’s local elections, Compostella Abierta, of sabotaging that effort by destroying talks on opening a direct connection with Israel.

“These talk were focused” and at advanced stages, he said, and the motion “resulted in the loss of an aerial connection,” he said. The La Voz de Galicia newspaper’s independent investigation of the affair, which included interviews with El Al officials, “produced clear indications that this is the case,” the newspaper reported.

Walter Wasercier, the director of El Al’s Spain operations, told the newspaper that he had personally pushed for opening the flight this summer, adding that El Al’s direct connection to Lisbon presented an opportunity to add Santiago to its list of Spanish destinations. Some 350,000 Israeli tourists visit Spain annually.

Marta Lois, Santiago’s alderwoman for tourism, denied that any talks on opening a flight to Israel had taken place and said that in any case they would not have been sabotaged by a call to boycott Israel.

But the Galician Association for Friendship with Israel told the Voz de Galicia paper that El Al opened in April a flight to Valencia instead of Santiago as a direct result of the boycott motion.

ACOM, a Madrid-based, pro-Israel group which is fighting the boycott campaign against Israel in Spain, blamed Santiago’s far-left ruling party of running the city “with ineptitude.” Earlier this year, an ACOM lawsuit resulted in a precedent High Court ruling labeling the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, against Israel, discriminatory. Several lower courts issued injunctions against municipalities that supported BDS, which ACOM argues has anti-Semitic overtones in Spain. BDS supporters deny this, saying their focus on Israel is for violations of international law.

The city’s support for boycotting Israel reflects “disregard not only toward Jews but for its own residents by tearing down a project that would have brought Santiago revenue, tourists and jobs,” ACOM said in a statement.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.