The BDS (Boycott, Divest and Sanctions) movement appears to be going from strength to strength. As with South Africa, it is largely a bottom-up process.
Exactly a week ago, we reported on how Spain had become the fourth EU country to impose some form of sanctions on Israel over its ongoing genocide in Gaza (after Ireland, Slovenia and Belgium). The sanctions imposed include a ban on the purchase or sales of weapons, ammunition and military equipment from or to Israel. There is also a ban on Israel-bound ships and aircraft carrying weapons or fuel from calling at Spanish ports or entering Spanish airspace.
Since then, things have escalated rapidly. Over the past two weeks, thousands of protesters have disrupted key stages of the 90th edition of Spain’s La Vuelta cycling race due to the organisers’ decision to allow an Israeli team to compete. That team is sponsored by Israel Premier-Tech whose owner, Sylvan Adams, is close to Benjamin Netanyahu and has done everything in his power over the past decade to project a good image for Israel through cycling.
Before the event began, pro-Palestine movements made repeated requests to the organisers and the Spanish government to expel the Israeli team from the event to prevent Israel from being able to “sportswash” its image as it commits the worst of all war crimes. But they were ignored. So, they took matters into their own hands by disrupting the race at various stages, starting in Catalonia. The cycling-mad Basques also put some sticks in spokes.
But it was during the final stage, in and around Madrid, where the coup de grace was delivered. On Sunday, an estimated 100,000 demonstrators (according to the government) managed to bring the race to a grinding halt despite a massive mobilisation of riot police. The cyclists were eventually forced to stop around 60 kilometres from the finishing line. The mayor of Madrid and the president of the Community of Madrid, both fervent Zionists, were seething.
It is not hard to see this as history in the making. For the first time in a very long time, Israel has suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of one of its Western allies. The people of Spain have finally said “basta” to the non-stop orgy of death and destruction taking place in Gaza. Just listen to the cacophony of noise ring out across Madrid’s streets and squares (you may want to turn the volume down):
Ni en mis mejores sueños pensaba que iba a haber esta reacción a nivel nacional en favor de Palestina.Pero es que, de Madrid menos aún.Estas imágenes están dando la vuelta al mundo.Orgullo de mi pueblo.Gracias Madrid.Palestina lliure 🇵🇸🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/zXpiEPVDjs
— José Vico 🔻🇵🇸🇿🇦 (@josevico4) September 14, 2025
Here they are chanting, among other things, “this is not a war, it’s a genocide”.
Gracias a estas movilizaciones se está hablando de las protestas a favor de Palestina y como denuncia al GENOCIDIO.Así que sí, son necesarias.Gracias a la buena gente de Madrid.Hoy no van a acabar la etapa.Somos antisionistas.🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸pic.twitter.com/XER8IlTaRi
— José Vico 🔻🇵🇸🇿🇦 (@josevico4) September 14, 2025
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, to his immense credit, has responded to the events by praising the protestors and calling for Israel’s expulsion from all international competitions, becoming the first European leader to do so. He has also threatened to boycott Eurovision 2026 should Israel participate. He even addressed the elephant in the room since October 7, 2023 — the EU’s glaring double standards over Israel when compared to Russia:
“Why was Russia expelled after the invasion of Ukraine, but Israel is not expelled after the invasion of Gaza?”
Breaking:
After the protests at La Vuelta cycling tour, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has just declared that “Israel should be expelled from international competitions,”
It’s the first time a European leader has made such a call. pic.twitter.com/3YTAjs2tF8
— Leyla Hamed (@leylahamed) September 15, 2025
Here’s the full subtitled clip:
BREAKING: SPAIN’S PM PEDRO SÁNCHEZ CALLS TO BAN ISRAEL FROM INTERNATIONAL SPORTS:
“Israel cannot use any international platform to whitewash its presence”
“Sports organisations should consider whether it’s ethical for Israel to continue participating” pic.twitter.com/kxEJbi67DI
— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) September 15, 2025
As we pointed out last week, Spain’s government has been slow to act, but at least it is now acting — unlike some:
David Lammy and Keir Starmer are Genocide deniers who deny Genocide because the UK Government actively supports it.
Both belong in The Hague, along with their war criminal guest Israeli President Isaac Herzog pic.twitter.com/IlLVQUTSh4
— Double Down News (@DoubleDownNews) September 9, 2025
Granted, the Sánchez government had little choice in the matter: pro-Palestine sentiment is strong across a broad cross-section of Spanish society, with 82% qualifying Israel’s acts in Gaza as genocide, according to a recent survey. Plus, Sánchez is facing myriad scandals at home and appears to have decided, wisely, that the Gaza crisis makes for a useful diversionary tactic, especially given the opposition’s unwavering support for Tel Aviv.
Whatever one might say about Sánchez, he is an innate political survivor. Since heading his first broad-based — or as some called it, Frankenstein — government in 2018, he has steered Spain through seven years of multiple crises (the fallout from the Catalan independence movement, the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath, surging inflation…) and, more recently, modest economic growth, even outlasting most of his EU peers.
Also, to his credit, he was one of the first EU leaders to criticise Israel for its indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, which he did back in November 2023, just one month into the genocide. It then took his government another six months to recognise Palestine but at least it did it. At the same time, his government continued to buy and sell weapons to and from Israel.
He has also been pushed into taking many of these actions by the sheer strength of opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza among both the Spanish public and his coalition partners. In a new interview Irene Montero recounts how in the early days of Israel’s assault of Gaza, Sánchez would bristle each time she and her fellow minister at the time, Ione Belarra, used the word “genocide” in public:
“When this genocide began, Ione Belarra and I were still ministers in the Spanish government. And one of the biggest sources of frustration for Pedro Sánchez was the fact that we began calling this a genocide on the very first day. The Socialist Party at the time wanted no one to use the word “genocide” and asked us not to. There is a level of hypocrisy here — to be more concerned about not naming the genocide than trying to stop it…
When you say it’s a genocide it means you can do something about it at the institutional level, and that was something the Socialist Party did not want. Now that civil society is pouring onto the streets to demand the end of this genocide, it has forced the government to shift position — or at least commit to doing something so that it can be seen to be taking action, even though there is a lot more it can do.
That all being said, at least someone in the collective West is doing something. Former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin says Spain is “saving Europe’s honour” (or what little is left of it. As readers may recall, de Villepin gave a historic speech at the UN Security Council, voicing France’s opposition to the United States’ military intervention in Iraq. He is also a fierce critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza. From El Independiente:
“We would like French diplomacy; we would like France to be more active, to be able to take initiatives, either by denouncing the association agreement with the Europeans, or by taking additional embargo measures as Spain does. Today, who is saving Europe’s honour in this region? Spain, not France,” De Villepin said in an interview on French public television Franceinfo…
“In this sense, I consider that France is not up to the task. Spain has already recognised the Palestinian state along with other countries, such as Ireland and Slovenia. Therefore, it is clear that an effort must be made. Peace and justice are the two conditions for a new stability in this region. And this message must be conveyed to Benjamin Netanyahu and to all the Israeli people,” said the former French premier, whose statements in solidarity with Gaza have brought him back into the public spotlight after more than a decade out of active politics.
Last week, even the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced some EU-wide sanctions against extreme Israeli ministers and violent settlers as well as the suspension of free trade with Israel during her annual “state of the union” speech to the European parliament in Strasbourg.
It is a sign that even some of Israel’s staunchest supporters in Europe are finally buckling under the weight of public and legal opinion as the genocide in Gaza approaches its two-year mark. As we previously reported, VdL has faced a barrage of criticism within EU institutions, including by the Commission’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, as well as in some European capitals, for her early unqualified support for Israel:
Following her visit to Israel in October, she was accused in a letter signed by 842 EU staffers of turning a blind eye to Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. The letter accused VdL of giving “a free hand to the acceleration and the legitimacy of a war crime in the Gaza Strip”. It also warned that the EU is “losing all credibility” as well as its status “as a fair, equitable and humanist broker,” while ripping into VdL’s “patent” double standards over what is currently unfolding in Palestine and events in Ukraine.
In early May, Borrell laid into his boss for ignoring a request lodged three months earlier by the governments of Spain and Ireland to conduct a thorough review of the EU’s trade agreement with Israel due to human rights violations in the Gaza Strip. Spanish President Pedro Sánchez and the-then Irish Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, sent a letter to the EU Commission president in February proposing a reconsideration of the association agreement, which includes among its clauses the possibility of suspending the agreement’s terms if international law is breached. But instead of suspending the agreement, VdL promoted closer EU-Israel cooperation.
It is not just her EU colleagues or underlings accusing VdL of complicity in war crimes. On May 22, two European human rights organisations — the Geneva International Peace Research Institute (GIPRI) and the Paris-based Collectif de Juristes pour le Respect des engagements internationaux de la France (CJRF) — and a group of “international concerned citizens”, submitted a legal brief to the ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan requesting the opening of an investigation into the EU Commission president for her complicity in Israel’s war crimes against Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including the Gaza Strip.
Here’s the Spanish MEP Irene Montero (Podemos) tearing into VdL’s criminal inaction over Gaza at the European parliament:
“Can you imagine Israel burning your children alive?”
Spanish MEP Irene Montero confronted president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen about her inaction against Israel. pic.twitter.com/UUhrZNhUNq
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) September 13, 2025
As the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories noted, Von der Leyen’s partial U-turn last week was simply “too little, too late”:
Hard to applaud this statement: too little, too late, intolerably insufficient under int’l law. EU states must ▶️impose a full arms embargo ▶️suspend trade (incl. @HorizonEU) ▶️prosecute alleged criminals and ▶️send a fleet to break the siege. Nothing less. https://t.co/0VBNfzLHwP
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) September 10, 2025
Given the speed and scale of the slaughter in Gaza, time is of the essence. A new report, by Doctor Gideon Ploya and Prof. Richard Hil, suggests that as many as 680,000 Palestinians, including 479,000 children, may have lost their life.
That is 28% of the pre-holocaust Gaza population of 2.4 million, and 11 times the present mainstream media under-counted estimate of 62,000 deaths.
— sarah (@sahouraxo) September 13, 2025
Spain will no doubt suffer reprisals for daring to escalate its sanctions against Tel Aviv. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has already accused Sánchez of being “an anti-Semite and a liar” in a message on social media. For Israel, the biggest danger is that other countries, not just in Europe, follow Madrid’s lead.
“Political violence has no place in our societies,” said Saar (see video below). “Just yesterday a pro-Palestinian mob sabotaged the La Vuelta cycling race in Spain. They did so with the support and encouragement of the Spanish government, of the Spanish prime minister. It’s almost unbelievable. Mr Sánchez and his communist ministers encourage violence.”
Tel Aviv has already banned two Spanish politicians from entering Israel and has also confirmed its withdrawal from the next edition of the Mobile World Congress, the world’s largest global technology fair held annually in Barcelona, the city from which the Global Sumud Flotilla departed for Gaza.
The US will presumably also join the scrum. When Spanish authorities began preventing the stopover of Israel-bound ships last year, the US Federal Maritime Commission opened a sanctioning file against Madrid. Last week, the Trump administration officially accused Spain of supporting Hamas due to its sanction measures against Israel. From Onda Cero:
The U.S. State Department expressed concern in a statement, stressing that Spain’s actions “embolden Hamas terrorists” and could affect US operations in the region. The warning came on the same day the Sánchez government announced a ban on Israel-bound ships from being able to refuel as well as on “the entry into Spanish airspace of State-owned aircraft carrying defence material bound for Israel”. It also coincided with an attack in Jerusalem in which a Spanish citizen died…
´Last Monday, the government approved a package of nine measures aimed at pressuring the Israeli government over the situation in Gaza. These include the arms embargo on Israel, the ban on the transit of military ships and aircraft, the designation as personas non grata certain Israeli ministers linked to the repression in Gaza and the suspension of the import of products from illegal settlements.
The good news, I suppose, is that whatever measures the US and Israel end up taking, they cannot prevent the Spanish people’s rebellion against Israel’s genocide from inspiring other people around the world to do the same. Whatever they do, they will make their case worse. Despite all the desperate attempts to suppress it, the BDS (Boycott, Divest and Sanctions) movement appears to go from strength to strength with each fresh Israeli assault on Gaza.
Just as happened with Apartheid South Africa, it is the offending country’s own vile actions that ultimately drive the success of BDS. And as with South Africa, it is largely a bottom-up process.
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