Spanish court annuls discriminatory agreement against Israel approved by Barcelona City Council

The 10th Contentious Administrative Court of Barcelona, following an appeal filed by ACOM – Action and Communication on the Middle East, has annulled the institutional declaration that the Plenary Session of the Barcelona City Council approved in November 20 2023.

This declaration included the rupture of institutional relations with Israel, and also contemplated the introduction of discriminatory contractual clauses against Israeli institutions, companies and organizations (and by extension, anyone who does not share the political postulates on the Arab-Israeli conflict imposed by the groups that approved the resolution).

The measure was proposed by Barcelona en Comú, a far-left group that is a partner of the President of the Spanish government, and supported by the separatist Esquerra Republicana and by Pedro Sanchez’s own party, the Socialist Party.

Action and Communication on the Middle East – ACOM, after agreement of its Extraordinary General Assembly, dated January 16, initiated legal action against the agreements approved by the City Council of Barcelona (and against the administrative acts and resolutions derived from them). Now the courts have upheld our appeal against this declaration, annulling it because it is not in accordance with the law.

The court decision is absolutely devastating: among other openly discriminatory other openly discriminatory aspects contained in said agreement, contrary to the Spanish Constitution, the contentious-administrative court considers that it is not just a matter of “mere declarations of intentions or simple declarations of intent or simple assertions”, but an agreement ‘with legal effects’.

In this sense, it underlines that the agreement “produces an inequality of treatment” that lacks justification (“we are, therefore, faced with discrimination that is not based on objective and reasonable objective and reasonable criteria, which leads to a violation of the principle of equality of art. 14 of the Spanish Constitution“), and that the City Council exceeds its competences and invades powers that are not within its competence.

The court decision also states that it also infringes the principles of objectivity and ideological neutrality that should govern the actions of the public authorities.

Thanks to the legal initiative of ACOM, a reference group in Spanish civil society that fights against anti-Semitic discrimination and harassment against the only state in the world, 88 institutional agreements have been annulled to date, 10 of them endorsed by High Courts of Justice throughout the country and, most importantly, by the Supreme Court itself. All of the rulings have stressed the unconstitutionality and illegality of exclusionary measures that violate the common framework of coexistence.

In the face of intolerance, in the face of anti-Semitism, we will never stop.