Spanish court halts boycott in local municipality near Valencia

ACOM, an Israel lobby group working to combat BDS in Spain, successfully halted a boycott decision passed by the Municipality of Xeraco near Valencia this week.

Xeraco is a town of some 6,180 inhabitants near the large city of Valencia. According to ACOM, in February 2016 the Xeraco City Council voted “not to establish any type of agreement or contract, whether political, institutional, commercial, agricultural, educational, cultural, sportive or security-related, with businesses or institutions which did not recognize the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination; to join the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) campaign against Israel, and to distribute the logo ‘Israeli Apartheid-Free Space’ to residents.”

Following intervention by ACOM, the Judicial Court No. 10 of Valencia pointed to the imposition of this type of limitation of public contracts as “unjustified restriction of businesses and institutions, and thus in possible violation of the constitutional right to equal treatment.”

The motion for the boycott was proposed by Compromis, the party in power, with the support of PSOE-PSV and “Canviar Xeraco” (Change Xeraco), a coalition made up of Podemos, Izquierda Unida, and ERC, extremeleft and Catalan separatist parties, respectively. The centrist-right PP abstained from voting.

Podemos, a rising political party with reported financial ties to the Iranian and Venezuelan regimes, obtained 20% of the last national election vote and 71 seats in the Spanish parliament.

The well-funded party has gained access to public institutions, local government and has also gained control over the city councils of Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia, Spain’s three largest cities.

According to ACOM, Podemos has used its presence in local governments over the last 10 months to promote an aggressive institutional BDS campaign that to date has declared 50 city councils throughout the country “free of Israeli apartheid” – declarations that continue on a weekly basis.

To date, thanks to ACOM’s legal actions, in 2016 Spanish courts have paralyzed boycotts promoted by eight local city councils.