ACOM is studying legal actions against the City Council of Valencia for violating the Spanish Constitution and promoting discrimination based on religion, ethnicity or national origin after it approved a BDS resolution

ACOM is studying legal actions against the City Council of Valencia for violating the Spanish Constitution and promoting discrimination based on religion, ethnicity or national origin after it approved a BDS resolution

ACOM is also considering criminal actions against the city councillors that promoted this antisemitic resolution inciting hatred.
Last Wednesday the town hall of Valencia, almost 1 Million population, the third largest in Spain and one of the main ports in the Mediterranean, approved a motion to demonise Israel and to boycott its citizens and companies. The declaration is full of lies, manipulations and libels, whilst it calls for the city to formally adhere to the BDS movement and declare itself “free of Israeli apartheid” (a known euphemism in Spain for Juddenfrei, where any perceived sympathiser of the Jewish State is demanded to publicly denounce the policies of the only democracy in the Middle East in order to be admitted to social, political, economic or civic activities in the municipality).

The motion was promoted by Podemos, an extreme left party integrated into the local government together with Compromís, a left-wing formation of Catalan nationalist style, and PSOE, the Spanish Socialist party. It should be noted that last week PSOE won a no-confidence vote against PM Rajoy with the help of Podemos, plus Catalan and Basque supremacist nationalists, and now leads Spain’s new government with PM Sanchez. The motion in Valencia was opposed by Ciudadanos and Partido Popular, constitutional parties.

On the days prior to the motion, ACOM made numerous efforts, both public and private, in order to provide accurate and contrasted information to political stakeholders and municipal legal services.
We informed the local press of the illegality of the BDS campaign, detailing dozens of judicial cases won by ACOM in the Spanish Courts that proved the unconstitutionality of exclusionary measures. We also engaged the support of leading figures of the local civil society and Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo, the prestigious legal firm that represents ACOM, to explain the judicial consequences of violating the common framework of coexistence and promoting discrimination.

On the advise provided that there might be personal criminal responsibilities for the approving city councillors, the proponents introduced a last minute amendment that temporarily suspended clause 8 of the motion, which dealt with the city adherence to the BDS movement and the declaration of » space free of Israeli apartheid», and asked the legal services of the city council to study the legality and implications of finally approving such clause.

Regardless, ACOM’s legal department is studying the whole declaration and the legal process to denounce the unconstitutionality of the agreement, considering the most appropriate legal course of action, as we have done on tens of cases over the last months and years.