After serving as mayor of Barcelona for eight years, Ada Colau, a left-wing politician who gained notoriety for severing the city’s ties to Tel Aviv, was ousted in Sunday’s municipal elections.
Xavier Trias, the right-wing candidate from the Junts party and a former mayor whom Colau had already ousted in 2015, defeated her.
Colau, who has a history of supporting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel, made headlines last February when she decided to call off the agreement that had partnered Barcelona and Tel Aviv as twin cities.
For 25 years, the Israeli city and the Catalan capital have been twinning.
Colau claimed in a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu that 4,000 of her constituents had asked her to “condemn the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people, support Palestinian and Israeli organizations striving for peace, and nullify the twinning contract between Barcelona and Tel Aviv.”
The Federation of the Jewish Communities of Spain strongly disapproved of the action and labeled it “sophisticated antisemitism.”
After that, José Luis Martnez-Almeida, the mayor of Madrid who was recently re-elected, proposed to twin Madrid with Tel Aviv.
He wrote in February, “It would be an honor to be twinned with Tel Aviv.
Martnez-Almeida, a People’s Party member, is one right-leaning politician who has been courting Israel diplomatically and commercially in recent years.
The Madrid government has not made any clear plans for implementing a twin-city connection, despite his suggestion.
Former housing rights campaigner Colau has justified the boycott of Israel by pointing to “the ongoing human rights violations against the Palestinian population and non-adherence to United Nations resolutions.”
In Barcelona, there will be about 3,500 Jews as of 2022.
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