Spain Permanently Withdraws Ambassador as Rift With Israel Deepens

Spain permanently withdrew its ambassador to Israel on Tuesday as a diplomatic standoff worsened between the two countries over Spain‘s opposition to the US-Israeli attacks on Iran.

The ambassador was summoned back to Spain last September amid a diplomatic row over Spanish measures banning aircraft and ships carrying weapons to Israel from its ports or airspace due to Israel‘s military offensive in Gaza, which Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar denounced as antisemitic.

On Tuesday, Spain published an announcement in its official gazette that the ambassador‘s position had been terminated. Spain‘s Foreign Ministry said its embassy in Tel Aviv will be led by a charge d’affaires for the foreseeable future.

The move marks the latest escalation in diplomatic relations between the two countries, which have been heavily strained since Israel launched its defensive military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in October of 2023.

Israel‘s embassy in Spain is also run by a charge d’affaires after the country summoned its ambassador last May in protest at Spain‘s decision to recognize a Palestinian state.

Tensions have heightened since the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, with Sa’ar accusing Spain in early March of “standing with tyrants” for opposing the war.

Last week, Iran expressed support for Spain’s decision to block US forces from using its bases for military operations against the Islamic regime, leaving Madrid as the only major EU country to have explicitly criticized the US-Israeli strikes on Iran.

Since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, Spain has been one of Israel’s fiercest critics, launching a fierce anti-Israel campaign aimed at undermining and isolating the Jewish state on the international stage.

Earlier this month, police raided a steel factory near Bilbao, northern Spain, questioning staff over suspected violations of the country’s arms embargo on Israel

The Action and Communication on the Middle East (ACOM) group, a pro-Israel organization in Spain, described the move as part of a “pattern of political pressure on economic actors for ideological reasons.”

“The combination of state intervention with a political climate that tolerates — and sometimes encourages — aggressive activism against Israel and its partners creates a scenario in which civil liberties and the legal security of companies and citizens are steadily eroded,” ACOM said in a statement.

In September, the Spanish government passed a law to take “urgent measures to stop the genocide in Gaza,” banning trade in defense material and dual-use products from Israel, as well as imports and advertising of products originating from Israeli settlements.

That same month, Spain recalled its ambassador to Israel and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez accused Israel of “exterminating defenseless people” in Gaza and “breaking all the rules of humanitarian law.”

Sánchez’s administration expanded the boycotted products to ban imports from Israeli communities in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.

While pursuing such policies and attacking Israel verbally, Sánchez has facing backlash from his country’s political leaders and Jewish community, who accuse him of fueling antisemitic hostility.

Amid a sharp rise in anti-Jewish hate crimes and anti-Israel sentiment, Lorenzo Rodríguez, mayor of Castrillo Mota de Judíos in northern Spain, accused the country’s leader in September of “fueling a discourse of hatred” against Israel and the Jewish people.

“The government is fostering antisemitism that will prove deeply damaging for Spain,” Rodríguez said in an interview with the local outlet El Español.

Comparing Spain’s attitude toward Israel with other countries, Sa’ar stated earlier this month that “the obsessive activism of the current Spanish government against Israel stands out in light of its ties with dark, tyrannical regimes — from Iran’s ayatollahs to [Nicolás] Maduro’s government in Venezuela.”