Barcelona’s City Council votes to cut institutional ties with Israel and suspend its Tel Aviv friendship agreement, citing international law violations and Palestinian rights. Barcelona’s City Council votes to cut institutional ties with Israel and suspend its Tel Aviv friendship agreement, citing international law violations and Palestinian rights.
The Barcelona City Council voted on Friday to sever institutional ties with the Israeli government and suspend its 1998 friendship agreement with the city of Tel Aviv, reported the AFP news agency.
The decision, citing alleged violations of international law and the rights of Palestinian Arabs, marks a significant diplomatic move by Spain’s second-largest city.
The motion, supported by the governing Socialist party, alongside far-left and leftist pro-independence groups, calls for a halt to all official relations with Israel “until respect for international law” and the “basic rights of the Palestinian people” are restored, according to AFP.
In addition to suspending the Tel Aviv-Jaffa agreement, the resolution urges Fira de Barcelona, the city’s trade fair organizer, not to host Israeli government pavilions or companies reportedly involved in the arms trade or profiting from the conflict in Gaza. A similar recommendation was extended to the Port of Barcelona.
Barcelona’s Mayor Jaume Collboni addressed the council during the session, stating, “The suffering and death in Gaza over the past year and a half, and recent attacks by the Israeli government, make any relationship unviable.”
This is not the first time that Barcelona has moved to suspend relations with Israel. In 2023, then-mayor Ada Colau took similar steps, which were subsequently reversed by Collboni after he unseated Colau in local elections.
The move comes amid tensions between Israel and Spain, which has been a vocal critic of Israel’s counterterrorism operations in the Gaza Strip.
In November of 2023, Spain’s Ambassador to Israel was summoned by the Foreign Ministry after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez claimed that “Israel is violating international law and is carrying out indiscriminate killings in Gaza.”
Last April, Sanchez criticized what he called Israel’s “disproportionate response” in the Gaza war, saying it risks “destabilizing the Middle East, and as a consequence, the entire world”.
(Israel National News’ North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)
