(JTA) — Two municipalities in Spain rescinded their adhesion to the campaign to boycott Israel following legal action by a Madrid-based organization devoted to defending the Jewish state.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…
We don’t know how exactly many Jews were forced out of Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella’s cruel Edict of Expulsion in 1492, but conservative estimates put the number of refugees somewhere between 100,000 and 160,000. We climbed the northern mountains to escape into Navarre, and from there we took to the sea, hoping to find…
(JTA) — Defying multiple rulings in Spain that declared boycotting Israel illegal, the municipality of a city near Valencia declared itself an “Israeli apartheid-free space.” The City Council of Sagunto, a city of 64,000 inhabitants, passed a motion Tuesday declaring itself part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel, the ACOM pro-Israel group…
(JTA) — Following a major Spanish city’s vote to boycott Israel, the leader of Spain’s third-largest party called the Jewish state a “criminal country” during an interview aired by public television broadcaster. Pablo Iglesias Turrión, leader of the Podemos far-left party, said this in an interview earlier this week on RTVE. “We need to act…
(JTA) — Nearly 5,000 people have become citizens of Spain or Portugal following the passing of laws in both countries on the naturalization of descendants of Sephardic Jews. In Portugal, where a procedure for naturalization under the law went into effect last year, 292 applicants for naturalization have been approved, Catarina Madeira, a spokeswoman for…
(JTA) — A synagogue in Madrid plans to present what it is calling the country’s first egalitarian Torah scroll because women participated in its writing. The scroll is slated to be unveiled Saturday at Congregation Bet El in the Spanish capital. Gustavo Surazski, an Argentina-born rabbi and sofer, or Torah scribe, began writing the scroll…
(JTA) — Diverging with the United States and the European Union, Israel has decided it would neither to support nor oppose Catalonian independence, an Israeli news website reported. Spain on Friday requested that Israel align itself with many other Western nations in rejecting a vote declaring independence, according to the report Monday on nrg. But senior Israeli diplomats decided in…
The official Madrid-based federation of Spanish Jews issued a statement October 27 opposing Catalonia’s effort to declare itself an independent republic. The statement, from the Federación de Comunidades Judías en España, voiced the group’s “profound worry over the serious national crisis” provoked by the Catalonian parliament’s unilateral declaration of independence on Friday. “As Spanish Jews,…
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