Spain’s ancient hatred returns

Five hundred years ago, Spain expelled its Jews.

Today, under Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Spain has become one of the loudest anti-Israel voices in Europe — weaponizing the language of “genocide,” boycotting Israel on the world stage, and once again turning Jews into moral outcasts.

History does not repeat itself exactly. But it rhymes with terrifying precision.

“Spain once burned Jews in public squares. Today it burns the Jewish state in the court of global opinion.”

This week, Sánchez defended Spain’s boycott of the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest because Israel was allowed to participate. He declared that “silence is not an option,” compared Israel’s inclusion to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and repeatedly invoked accusations of “genocide” and “illegal war.”

This is not merely criticism of Israeli policy. Democracies criticize one another all the time. This is something darker. It is the obsessive moral isolation of the world’s only Jewish state. It is Spain once again deciding that Jewish self-defense is uniquely illegitimate. And for Jews, Spain carries historical baggage heavier than perhaps any nation in Europe.

In 1492 — the very year Christopher Columbus sailed westward — King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella signed the infamous Alhambra Decree expelling Jews from Spain. Tens of thousands fled. Others converted under terror.

For more than a thousand years before that decree, Jewish life had flourished in Spain. Sephardic Judaism produced giants of philosophy, poetry, medicine, commerce, and Torah scholarship. Jewish thinkers helped shape Spanish civilization itself.

Then came the betrayal. The Jews were suddenly recast as contaminants. The Spanish Inquisition institutionalized paranoia against Jews and converts known as “conversos” — Jews who had converted to Christianity, often under threat of death.

“The Jew could convert, but Spain insisted the Jew could never truly belong.”

Those suspected of secretly practicing Judaism became known as Marranos or crypto-Jews. Families lived in terror. Candles hidden on Friday nights. Hebrew prayers whispered behind shuttered windows. Children warned never to reveal family secrets.

And then came the autos-da-fé — grotesque public spectacles of humiliation, torture, and execution. Men and women accused of “Judaizing” were marched through public squares wearing humiliating garments, condemned before cheering crowds, and in many cases burned alive. Spain became obsessed with “limpieza de sangre” — purity of blood. Even conversion was not enough. Jewish ancestry itself became suspect. Modern racial antisemitism would later borrow heavily from this poisoned ideology.

Today’s Spain is, thankfully, not the Spain of Torquemada. No one is dragging Jews to public burnings. But moral mechanisms can evolve while retaining the same underlying animus.

The medieval accusation was that Jews poisoned wells and corrupted Christendom. The modern accusation is that Israel poisons humanity and corrupts civilization.

The old Spain accused Jews of ritual evil. The new Spain accuses the Jewish state of genocide. And Sánchez has become one of Europe’s chief prosecutors.

He recognized a Palestinian state unilaterally while Hamas still held hostages. He has called Israeli military actions “disproportionate.” He has described Israeli policies as moving toward “apartheid.”

His government awarded one of Spain’s highest honors to Francesca Albanese, a U.N. official notorious for incendiary anti-Israel rhetoric and repeated accusations of Israeli “genocide.” His administration announced a total arms embargo against Israel and officially adopted genocide language regarding Gaza. And now Spain has withdrawn from Eurovision because Jews singing songs on a European stage apparently is intolerable to the Sánchez government.

“When Spain boycotts Israel at Eurovision, it is not opposing war. It is opposing Jewish legitimacy.”

Let us ask a very simple question. Where was this moral outrage during Syria’s slaughter of hundreds of thousands? Where was Spain’s boycott of China over the Uyghurs? Where were the sanctions over Iran hanging gays from cranes? Why is the Jewish state uniquely singled out?

The answer is uncomfortable but obvious. Because for much of Europe, the Jew remains the symbolic defendant in history’s courtroom.

Antisemitism mutates.

In Christian Europe, Jews were hated as killers of Christ. In racial Europe, Jews were hated as biological contaminants. In Soviet Europe, Jews were hated as “Zionists.” Today, Jews are hated as Israelis.

The language changes. The obsession remains.

And Spain — with its uniquely bloody Jewish history — should know better than any nation on earth where this road leads. The descendants of the expelled Sephardim carried the keys to their Spanish homes for centuries. They preserved Ladino songs mourning a homeland that cast them out.  For generations, “Next year in Jerusalem” also meant “Never again Spain.”

Yet modern Spain had an opportunity to redeem itself. There were hopeful signs. Spain eventually, centuries later, revoked the Alhambra Decree. It extended citizenship offers to descendants of Sephardic Jews.

But now Sánchez is reviving something ancient and ugly: the idea that Jewish suffering counts less, Jewish fear counts less, and Jewish self-defense is inherently criminal. After October 7 — after Jewish women were raped, families butchered, children burned alive, and hostages dragged into Gaza — Sánchez chose not moral clarity, but moral equivalence. Or worse.

“When Jews are massacred and the world responds by condemning Jews, antisemitism is no longer hidden. It is revealed.”

Israel is not perfect.

No democracy at war is.

But Israel is fighting a genocidal terror organization openly committed to its destruction. Hamas does not seek coexistence. It seeks annihilation. And when European leaders like Sánchez adopt the language of “genocide” against Israel while minimizing or contextualizing Hamas barbarism, they are not advancing peace. They are empowering extremism.

Spain today stands at a crossroads between its better angels and its darkest instincts. It can remember the Spain of Maimonides, Yehuda Halevi, and Sephardic brilliance. Or it can descend again into the Spain of inquisitors, purity tests, and obsessive hostility toward Jews.

The test is not whether Spain criticizes Israel. The test is whether Spain applies to Israel standards applied to no other nation on earth. Pedro Sánchez has failed that test spectacularly. And Jews around the world hear echoes that perhaps Spaniards themselves do not hear.

We hear the echoes of expulsions. We hear the echoes of autos-da-fé. We hear the echoes of a Europe that always finds a new vocabulary for an old hatred.

Spain once expelled the Jews physically. Today, it seeks to expel the Jewish state morally from the family of nations.

The Jewish people survived Ferdinand and Isabella.

We survived Torquemada.

We survived the Inquisition.

And we will survive Pedro Sánchez too.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach of Englewood is the author of 30 books. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @RabbiShmuley.