The New Spanish "Limpieza de Sangre”
The New Spanish "Limpieza de Sangre”

The Spanish Inquisition called it “limpieza de sangre”: purity of blood.

It was the attempt to create a generation purged of any Jewish contamination.

A new limpieza de sangre, the obsession for a kind of anti-Israeli purity, has emerged in Spain and the new government can do little to reverse its hateful course.

Despite the fact that in Spain there are only 40,000 Jews out of a population of nearly 46 million, anti-Semitism is growing at an alarming rate.

Jose Louis Zapatero’s party was just thrown out and conservative Mariano Rajoy was elected.

The History of Jews and Spain was rocky for centuries, with Spain giving Jews a “choice” of expulsion, forced conversion or death in 1492.

Francisco Franco’s fascist, pro-Arab dictatorship that ruled Spain from 1939 to 1975 stoked anti-Israel sentiments and in 1986 Spain was the last Western European state to recognize Israel.

The left-wing prime minister Zapatero, who refused to visit the Jewish state, aligned with anti-Israeli activists whose agenda includes strong anti-Jewish sentiments.

Spain voted earlier this month to admit Palestine as a full member of UNESCO, the United Nations education and cultural body.It was also in the group of EU countries that were in favour of the Palestinian UN statehood bid.


During the Second Lebanon War in 2006, Zapatero, with a keffiyeh thrown around his neck, told a group of young socialists that “no one should defend themselves with abusive force which does not protect innocent human beings”.

At a dinner party in the Moncloa Palace (the Spanish White House) in 2005, Zapatero addressed his guests by launching into a tirade that ended with the phrase: “It is understandable that someone might justify the Holocaust”.

The Spanish hatred is not related to a leftist or conservative government, it’s imbued in the fabric of the Spanish society and culture, despite Javier Solana, head of foreign affairs of the European community, who declares that “there is no anti-Semitism in Europe”.



Spanish hatred is not related to a leftist or conservative government, it’s imbued in the fabric of the Spanish society.

The director of Artmalaga art gallery in Andalusia sent the following answer in response to the question of a Jewish artist: “We totally reject working with any person related to Israel, because we completely disagree with its segregationist policy. We have a certainly anti-Semitic stand against any person linked to that country, which murders daily people regardless of their age, for the sole reason of being Palestinians”.

Actress Marisa Paredes, president of the Spanish Academy for Arts and Cinematography, declared to the Europa Press Agency that Roman Polanski got an Oscar for his film “The Pianist” because “of the Jewish lobby’s intrigues”.

The Pew Research Center’s 2008 Global Attitudes Project has found 46 percent of Spanish residents held an unfavorable view of Jews.

Spanish journalism is deeply anti-Israeli regardless its political affiliation. If the liberal media demonizes Israel as the beacon of colonialism, the widely read Catholic newspaper ABC always adds the word “revenge” to its description of any military action that Israel takes.

The only exception is Pilar Rahola, a left-wing journalist who courageously opposes the new Judeophobia.

In 2009 the Spanish Housing Ministry disqualified Ariel University Center from the international Solar Decathlon contest, on the grounds that the university is “located in occupied territories”.

In 2006, there was an attempt to invert the day of official Holocaust remembrance. Susana Leon Gordillo, a member of then Zapatero’s Socialist Party and mayor of the Madrid suburb of Ciempozuelos, decided to commemorate the “genocide of the Palestinian people” in his town. At the request of the Spanish Foreign Ministry, “Palestine Genocide Day” was canceled.

The leader of Izquierda Unida, Gaspar Llamazares, also declared his party was fed up with the six million Jews killed during the Holocaust, and announced that his party would not take part in any homage paid to their memory.

The anti-Israel “Rusell Tribunal,” named after British philosopher Bertrand Russell, was funded by Barcelona’s city hall.

The Israeli embassy received dozens of postcards written by Spanish schoolchildren with messages such as “Jews kill for money,” “Leave the country to the Palestinians” and “Go somewhere where they will accept you.”

In 2009 a Spanish judge decided to investigate for “war crimes” Israeli ministers Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Moshe Ya’alon and five other former top security officials for a 2002 bombing in Gaza that killed top Hamas terrorist Salah Shehadeh.

Last year gay spaniards banned the Tel Aviv municipality’s “TLV Love Embassy” float from participating in the Spanish capital’s upcoming international gay pride parade.

In the same period, Spanish Foreign Minister Trinidad Jiménez refused to grant diplomatic immunity from arrest to former Shin Bet Chief MK Avi Dichter, who was planning on taking part in a seminar on the Middle East peace in Madrid.

The same Spain which rebuilt its ancient ghettos throughout the country, claiming back the glory of the medieval Jewish community for tourism purposes, thought it had solved its “Jewish problem” in 1492.

Some 500 years later, the Spanish authorities are trying to finish the job.