(Translated from Spanish)
The Chabad synagogue in Barcelona, located in the Les Corts district of the capital, has dawned this Wednesday with the phrase “Why do you kill in Palestine” painted on the doors of the building of worship.
This is the second attack on synagogues in the city in nine days, suffered on 17 April by the centenary Jewish community of Barcelona, CIB.CAT, which houses the Great Maimonides Synagogue, precisely on the day of the commemoration of the Holocaust.
The Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain, FCJE, and the Israeli Community of Barcelona, CIB.CAT, have expressed in a statement their strong condemnation of the act of vandalism.
Both institutions have expressed their solidarity with the Chabad organisation and have demanded that the Barcelona authorities condemn the act and arrest the perpetrators.
Several Jewish organisations in Barcelona have condemned the vandalism: “This is not politics, it’s a synagogue!” commented an account from the Jewish community of Barcelona.
“Incredibly disturbing! To see a synagogue in Barcelona defaced with anti-Israel graffiti is a jarring reminder that anti-Zionism and antisemitism come from the same dangerous ideology,” said the European Jewish Congress.
So far, neither the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, nor the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, nor the vice-president of the Catalan Parliament, Alba Vergès, have condemned the acts or made a statement.
“Attacking Jewish places of prayer in Barcelona is a clear case of antisemitism,” the organisation says. “Any attack of this kind has no justification whatsoever and indicates that the perpetrators of the aggression are against the Jews of Barcelona,” they conclude in the statement.
The Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain and the Jewish community of Barcelona warn and show their deep concern for the “growing antisemitism” that they are detecting in Catalonia.
