(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,…
Mention Val d’Aran, a valley at the foot of the Pyrenees in Catalonia’s Lleida province, and most Spaniards think of winter. Popular for its access to pistes of various difficulties, the valley is peppered with ski resorts that buzz as soon as the first snow appears on the ground. Members of the Spanish Royal family…
The Spanish national soccer team was in Jerusalem this week for a World Cup qualifier against Israel. While the match itself was fairly tame – a 1-0 win for the visitors – one of Spain’s star players set off some fireworks before kickoff. Marco Asensio, a midfielder that plays for Real Madrid, spent the night…
(JTA) — Seeing armed police in riot gear outside a school in Barcelona, the Israeli lawmaker Ksenia Svetlova felt the instincts kick in from her days as a Middle East reporter for Russian-language media. “One look was enough to see these officers were preparing for something bad,” said Svetlova, a Zionist Union lawmaker who was in…
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