A Spanish mayor invited pro-Palestine activists to launch the annual San Fermin Festival in Pamplona on Sunday, where they chanted “Long live free Palestine” and holding giant banner that read “destroy Israel”.
The Israeli embassy in Spain condemned the incident as a sign of “an obsession” with the Jewish state.
The traditional week-long festival features the well-known Running of the Bulls, in which the animals are let loose in sectioned-off parts of the city as people run ahead of them.
Wearing keffiyehs, the activists from the Yala Nafarroa con Palestina organisation led the festival’s opening ceremony. One of the group, Lidón Soriano, told the audience “There’s a genocide,” prompting applause.
“Free Palestine,” she yelled, as thousands of people gathered on Pamplona’s main square jumped up and down waving ceremonial red bandannas, some emblazoned with a drawing of the borders of Israel labeled as “Palestine”.
Soriano and another activist, Eduardo Ibero, lit the fuse of a rocket-shaped firework, whose launch traditionally signals the official start of the event. As the firework was launched, Soriano screamed into the microphone “Long live Free Palestine,” drawing fresh applause.
In the plaza below them, thousands huddled around a display made up of individuals dressed in dark colours who stood in the shape of the State of Israel. They later spread a giant banner that read "destroy Israel".
Rabbi Menachem Margolin, the chairman of the European Jewish Association, referenced in his comment to JNS the many Basque separatist symbols on display at San Fermin.
"For 3,000 years, Jews longed for independence. We won it. That radical independence movements hate us for defending the world’s only Jewish state speaks volumes about their politics… [To them] everyone can have a country, unless you are Jewish," he said.
Pamplona's cultural celebration "was hijacked by hate" in "the latest example of the genocide blood libel that has infected public events from rock concerts to sport events across Europe. It is disturbing, and it’s dangerous," he added.
Likewise Israel’s embassy on X expressed its “disgust” at the event. It is “intolerable that Spanish institutions support individuals or groups whose goal is to incite hatred against Israel and that in no way contribute to peace”, said a spokesperson.
The embassy also accused the group of fueling the political “obsession” with the Jewish State.
Local mayor Joseba Asiron, though, expressed his "pride" at the message of "solidarity, rationality and humanity" delivered at the "sweetest moment" of the event, according to the EFE news agency.
