Legal blow against anti-Semitism in the City Hall of Pamplona

• After the lawsuit filed by ACOM, the agreement of boycott against Israel approved by the city hall of Pamplona has been annulled.
• The sentence points out that said discrimination is a violation of the right to equality expressed in Article 14 of the Spanish Constitution.
• Also, it determines that the declaration violates the principles of neutrality and objectivity that must govern the management of the public interest, Article 103 of the Spanish Constitution and Article 6 of the Spanish Local Government Law.

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On 10 September 2019 the Contentious Administrative Court number 3 of Pamplona, after the appeal filed by ACOM, annulled in a detailed and firm sentence the disguised boycott against Israel approved by the Presidency Committee of the City Hall of Pamplona in 2018.

It was on 18 June 2018 when the City Hall of Pamplona joined the anti-Semite statements that are being promoted by the Spanish radical left political parties in all levels of the public administration. The declaration was approved by 6 votes in favour of Euskal Herria Bildu, a political party with close links to the terrorist group ETA, Geroa Bai, a nationalist coalition integrated in the party PNV, and Aranzadi and Izquierda-Ezquerra, extreme left political parties.  Against, the 4 votes of Unión del Pueblo Navarro, a constitutionalist party, and the abstention of the Socialist Party of Navarra, PSOE.

Following the usual practices of deceit and distortion of these radical groups, the city hall, through its Presidency Committee, issued a text that intended to deceive the citizens, approving among others “the right of the citizens of Pamplona to use the boycott against Israel” or the denial of public spaces to Israelis.

The Court spoke in very clear terms, pointing out that the approved declaration “violates the principles of neutrality and objectivity that must govern the management of the public interest, Article 103 of the Constitution and Article 6 of the Local Government Law”, “it being clear that said declaration creates an unjustified discrimination against the State of Israel and the Israelis; a discrimination that violates the right to equality expressed in Article 14 of the Spanish Constitution”.

The sentence also points out that “local governments do not have competence in international affairs” to which the declaration makes reference, “exceeding firstly a mere declaration of principles, and secondly the specific local problems of the citizens, and also gives itself international competences it does not have”. It also considers that the city hall does not have competence to declare the Ambassador of Israel, and any of its representatives, as persona non grata in Pamplona, as “there is no legal basis for it and it does not concern the municipal or local citizens’ interest”.

It discloses that the schemes of these anti-Semite groups are clear for the court, by manifesting that “points with legal effectiveness are agreed that exceed the mere manifestation of a political will, that it is not approved to be sent to the Plenary Session, but a real Agreement, approving the aforementioned points”.

According to the President of ACOM, Ángel Mas, “in Spain the public institutions have subsidised an industry of hatred that has promoted anti-Semite discrimination with pretences of moral superiority and aspirations of impunity. But as long as Spain continues to be a democracy and our courts defend our constitutional liberties, ACOM will expose these extremists and will recover the dignity for our Jewish minority threatened by the extreme left of Podemos and friends of ETA and their pathetic allies in the Spanish left“.

Thanks to the legal initiative of ACOM, 49 institutional BDS-ELAI agreements have been judicially annulled or by the local and/or public administrations themselves.