Spain’s Jewish communities call for probe into neo-fascist demonstration in Madrid

The Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain (FCJE) has called on the hate crimes public prosecutor to investigate antisemitic accusations made during a demonstration in honor of the División Azul, or Blue Division, held in Madrid on Saturday. The military unit, which was made up of volunteers, was sent by former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco to support Adolf Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union during the Second World War.

In a video that has been shared online by the digital magazine La Marea, a young woman is seen at a lectern with a microphone surrounded by dozens of people carrying neo-fascist and Nazi symbols and paraphernalia. The woman in the video is heard saying that “the enemy is always going to be the same albeit wearing different masks: the Jew.” She adds: “Because there is nothing that is more true than this statement: the Jew is to blame, the Jew is to blame, and the Blue Division fought for this.” She later states that communism is “a Jewish invention to pit the workers against one another.”

A tweet from online publication La Marea with videos from the demonstration.

The FCJE, which represents Jewish communities in Spain, said that it considers it to be “unconscionable in a country with rule of law and full democracy for these serious accusations to go unpunished,” pointing out that in July 2020 Spain joined the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, “which considers accusations against the Jews of being blameworthy for any event to be antisemitic.” The FCJE and the Platform against Antisemitism and the Movement against Intolerance said that they will use “all the legal means” at their disposal to bring these events to the justice system.

The Israeli ambassador in Spain, Rodica Radian-Gordon, wrote on Twitter that the “antisemitic proclamations made in the homage to the Blue Division in Madrid are disgusting and cannot have a place in a democratic society. Education and learning the truth about history is the way to avoid the past repeating itself,” she added.

English version by Simon Hunter.