Is Spain an anti-Semitic country?

Is Spain an anti-Semitic country? The negative response—and the praise of the coexistence model—would make sense if it were not for the fact that there are no Jews in Spain.. The demographic reference represents 45,000 citizens in a stagnation of 45 million. And it cannot be said that the granting of passports to Jews of Sephardic origin produced large adhesions.

In 2015, the Spanish Government intended to repair, on an institutional basis and as atonement, the historical affronts, the medieval pogroms, the expulsion, the structural anti-Semitism, the enlightened persecutions, even the leader's allusions to the danger of the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy..

It was an exercise in historical memory whose expectations of redemption did not stimulate the interest of the beneficiaries.. Few cases responded to reconciliation. There were for romantic reasons and for practical reasons, including among the latter the residents of Latin American countries—Argentina, Venezuela, Uruguay—in an unstable political situation..

Is Spain an anti-Semitic country? The answer takes on a disturbing profile after visiting the Prado Museum. And not only because of the anti-Semitic tradition of the iconography of national art in all its periods, but because of the exhibition that has just opened with a title with expiatory connotations: The Lost Mirror. Jews and converts in medieval Spain.

It is interesting to frequent it because of the artistic interest of some of the works collected—Pedro Berruguete, Bartolomé Bermejo, Bernat Martorell—and because of all the religious, sociological, political and cultural arguments that predisposed the aversion to Jews.. Art played a pedagogical function in the narrative of anti-Semitic propaganda. Not by caricaturing David's children as blind, greedy, abject and animal creatures, but by transferring suspicions and discrimination to the converts who preferred to stay instead of embarking on the path of exile..

The exhibition ends precisely with the edict of expulsion that the Catholic Monarchs announced in 1492, although the inventory of antecedents—the dress codes of 1215, the Girona pogrom, the racial laws, the Inquisition—seems as eloquent as the influence of the Anti-Semitic DNA in later centuries. Our contemporary vocabulary subscribes to the insult of marrano without paying attention to the pejorative definition that classified Jewish converts.. The Church, the State and the Holy Office placed them in an irremediable category, precisely because the problem of the Jews did not consist of their religion, but of their blood and the responsibility for deicide forever and ever..

It is the context in which some artists – Berruguete in the lead – lent themselves to the campaigns of demonization of the Marranos and the Jews, although the fascinating and disturbing exhibition at the Prado – curated by Joan Molina – also documents the codices, treaties and to the songs that formalized the blades of the black legend and supremacism.

Has the genetic anti-Semitism of the Spanish been corrected? The crater of the Holocaust has put out of place any emboldened or explicit position of repudiation of the Jews, but suspicion of the other has found different recycling channels. In fact, solidarity with the Palestinians and the flag of oppressed peoples often identify old anti-Semitic habits.. A cover-up path consists of the rejection of imperialism, that is, the allergic reaction with which progress denounces the geopolitical relations of the United States and Israel.. And the other path, undertaken since the Intifada, lies in the strength of anti-Zionism.

The great enemy of leftist-libertarian thought would not be the Jews, but the State that represents them, the monster of Israel, the beast, although such a megalomaniac abstraction – the Star of David in its terrifying dimension – suffers from a perversion that identifies the people with the state. And that, for identical reasons, describes the shadow of anti-Semitism with the same telltale features of a painting by Berruguete.

It is impressive that the Spanish left does not give relevance to the evidence of a democratic society – the Israeli one – that has demonstrated against Netanyahu for his authoritarian aberrations and that has questioned the excesses of Gaza and the West Bank. There may be no greater socialist utopia than Israel's agricultural communes – the kibbutzim -, many of them involved in solidarity initiatives with Palestine's neighbors, both in health and food programs and in the political pressure that advocates for the coexistence model..

Saturday's terrorist barbarity hit one of those kibbutz that cooperated in Gaza. And they define the difference between a medieval State and an open and besieged society at the same time.. Our archaizing left has no problem in fully identifying Israel's retaliation with the Israelis (and the Jews), although what is more impressive is the naturalness with which Yolanda Díaz, Sumar and Podemos relativize Hamas's link with the Palestinians of Gaza. And they subordinate barbarism to the cause of the oppressed people.

We have an anti-Zionist, anti-imperialist and anti-Israel left that, for reasons of antagonism, has fostered a disconcerting devotion to the Iranian theocracy and the Bolivarian countries that subscribe to the campaign of extermination of Zion.. Podemos maintained structural relations with Tehran, to the extent that Pablo Iglesias' television was financed with the money of the ayatollahs.. “Riding contradictions,” said the leader of Podemos to excuse sympathy towards a religious tyranny whose model of society disagrees with any expectation of democracy and tolerance, let alone whether we are talking about feminism or the rights of homosexuals..

Is Spain then an anti-Semitic country? The polarization of society has led the Middle Eastern crisis to the exasperating logic of sides. The ambiguity of the left with Hamas has repercussions on the overacting with which the right indicates and exaggerates its total involvement with the cause of Israel, often simplifying the debate between barbarism and civilization or perverting it into an electoral debate..

The case of Vox is disturbing, because Abascal has not tired of denouncing the Jewish conspiracy of George Soros and has done so even in Parliament, although the solidarity that has arisen towards Israel is also explained by his support for Donald Trump and the priority of the aversion to Muslims, or “the mohameds”, as the leader of Vox said.

The game of antagonisms always needs the reference of the other. We Spaniards cannot be anti-Semitic in a country where there are no Jews—we expel them—but atavistic misgivings concern immigrants from Islam, the caricature of their habits, and the spread of the threat..

It is the perspective that gives special interest to one of the paintings that identify the Prado Museum exhibition.. Not because of its artistic value, nor because of the expertise of its author, but because the Jews appear dressed in Arab clothing and Islamist folklore, mystified in a generalization of infidel monotheistic religions that must be persecuted and eliminated..

So is Spain an anti-Semitic country? The concern of an affirmative answer can be recognized in the embryonic exhibition of the Prado, in the contemporary ambiguity of the left, in the national Catholicism of the reactionary right and even in the current RAE dictionary…. “Jew: derogatory adjective. Said of a greedy or usurious person.”