Boycott en el Barrio: Spanish Protesters Reject Israeli Propaganda Efforts
Protesters gather outside the Galileo Galilei Cultural Center in Madrid. (Photo: John Collins/Weave News)
On an ordinary Wednesday morning in the calm, well-to-do Chamberi district of Madrid, a group of about 150 Spaniards stood on the street corner opposite a large cultural center, with riot police watching on intently, and chanted:
“Murderers! Murderers! Shame! Shame!”
At a time when many Spaniards, often thousands at a time, continue to fill the streets in large marches denouncing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, this action was smaller and more localized. Yet it revealed something important about the increasingly pariah status of the state that is accelerating its drive to remove Palestinians from their homeland through bombardment, mass starvation, paramilitary violence, and forced displacement.
“Israel out of our neighborhoods!”
The occasion for the March 6 protest was the screening of #Nova, an Israeli documentary film, at the City of Madrid’s Galileo Galilei Cultural Center. The film documents the experiences of young people who were at the Nova musical festival on October 7, 2023, when Hamas fighters attacked the festival, reportedly killing more than 300 people. Since that day, the Israeli military has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza - between one and two percent of the entire population - with many more undoubtedly lying beneath the rubble or facing the immediate reality of a massive food and public health crisis brought on by the Israeli assault.
Here in Europe, the failure of the political class to find the courage to hold Israel accountable remains a key point of emphasis for the Palestine solidarity movement. As I reported back in October, chants of ““Israel asesina, Europa patrocina!” (“Israel kills, Europe sponsors!”) are a regular feature of street protests in Spain, where activists are seeking to keep the pressure on the socialist-led government to cut off diplomatic and military relations with Israel.
As the protest in Madrid got underway, I spoke with one woman from the neighborhood when she arrived to lend her support. Wearing a button displaying her solidarity with Palestine, she said she was struck by the fact that there had been little to no publicity of the film screening, which was accompanied by a photographic exhibition. And indeed there hadn’t: curiously, the website of the cultural center contains no mention of it.
According to the group that organized the protest, however, the Israeli embassy had issued a public invitation to the screening and exhibition. In response, the group, the Frente Antiimperialista Internacionalista, put out a call for people to join a “concentration of revulsion” coinciding with the arrival of embassy personnel at the cultural center. Under the slogan “Israel out of our neighborhoods!”, the protest sought to focus attention on the use of cultural events to “justify genocide and colonization.”
As the protesters gathered and began chanting, there was a significant police presence around the cultural center, including several of the riot police (antidisturbios) vans that are omnipresent at Madrid protests. The police on the scene were requiring the protesters to stay on the opposite corner across the intersection occupied by the cultural center.
Shortly before the event was scheduled to begin, a group of vehicles with a security escort arrived, presumably carrying representatives from the Israeli embassy. As they drove Galileo street past the protesters, one of the security officers who was walking in the street in front of the small motorcade wagged his finger dismissively at the crowd, which responded with louder chants of “Murderers!”
A growing boycott
The protest was a visible reminder of how the Palestine solidarity movement, motivated by the urgent need to stop an ongoing genocide, continues to chip away at the legitimacy of the Zionist project and its image throughout Europe.
Prior to October 7, an event such as the Israeli film screening would have been advertised more confidently and widely, and any backlash against it would have been minimal at best. But activists are becoming more aware of how Israel’s hasbara (propaganda) efforts work, and more and more people are choosing to stand up not only against Israeli violence itself, but also against efforts to whitewash that violence in the cultural realm.
It’s no coincidence that the protesters crowded on the street corner in Chamberi repeatedly chanted “Boycott! Boycott! Boycott Israel!” outside the cultural center. In doing so, they echoed a key demand of the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) framework that seeks to use nonviolent economic and cultural pressure to bring the Israel occupation to an end.
More scenes from the protest
