In an act of institutional inconsistency, Jaume Collboni intended to pass through the Ben-Gurion airport despite having decided to sanction all relations with the State of Israel.
The mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, had planned to travel to Israel on Friday as part of an official trip as the city’s leader, but he was forced to cancel after Israeli authorities denied him entry.
The mayor, who recently decided to boycott Israel and break off relations, intended to land at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, an act of institutional inconsistency after the resolutions adopted by his City Council, including the veto of Israeli companies or those working in Israel, Enfoque Judio magazine reported.
Collboni had submitted an application through the ETA system, which reviews in advance requests for entry into Israel from citizens of visa-exempt countries. His request was rejected due to his public statements against Israel.
According to El Periódico de Cataluña, he had been invited by the mayors of Ramallah and Bethlehem in the West Bank, with an agenda that included visits to various places and cooperation projects financed by the Barcelona City Council. The Catalan leader also intended to visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and hold meetings with the Palestinian Authority, according to media reports in Israel.
The municipal delegation, led by the mayor, also included city council technicians and a group of journalists, and had the authorization of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The measure to ban the delegation from entering Israel was adopted by the Interior Ministry in a decision at the highest level and in coordination with Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, Acting Interior Minister Yariv Levin, and National Security Council head Tzachi Hanegbi. In a statement, the Interior Ministry claimed that the mayor was banned because of his “history of defaming the State of Israel and participating in a boycott of Israel.”
In May, the Barcelona City Council plenary session approved an unprecedented measure: to break off institutional relations with Israel until an immediate and permanent ceasefire is declared in the Gaza Strip and the blockade on humanitarian aid is lifted.
The decision not only included the suspension of diplomatic relations, but also the exclusion of Israel from Fira de Barcelona and the banning of companies linked to the war.
There is virtually no Israeli company that can avoid the boycott, making it a widespread measure. The latest case has been that of the French multinational Altrom, with a branch in Israel, which has been excluded from the Barcelona Metro tender on the basis of this boycott.
This is not the first time that the city has broken off relations with Israel. In 2023, under the mandate of Ada Colau, the Barcelona City Council had already temporarily suspended all official ties, including the twinning with Tel Aviv.
At the time, the measure was presented as a political gesture of condemnation, which is now being repeated in the plenary session led by Collboni, although with an indefinite nature and a broader scope in the institutional and economic life of the city.
The leader of the opposition Partido Popular (PP) in the Barcelona City Council, Daniel Sirera, reacted to Israel’s decision with a message on social media in which he stated that “Collboni broke off relations with Israel, voted to boycott Israeli companies and tarnished Barcelona’s international image. I am not in favor of vetoes, but the mayor could not expect anything else. All our actions have consequences.”
Among Jewish organizations, pro-Israel adocacy group ACOM, which fights against anti-Semitism, called the decision “coherent, legitimate, and fully justified.”
“This is a coherent decision, given that Collboni’s animosity is not an isolated incident, but rather reflects a continuous and obsessive behavior over time against the Jewish state. This hostility has become more aggressive, precisely since the savage attacks that the Jewish State and its citizens suffered from Gaza by Islamist terrorists from Hamas,” the organization said in a message on social media.
“In this context, the mayor’s intention to visit Israel ‘as if nothing had happened’, as if his persistent delegitimization and criminalization of the Jewish state had no consequences, reveals the extent to which certain politicians have normalized impunity in Spain,” it said.
‘This hostility has become more aggressive, precisely since the savage attacks that the Jewish state and its citizens suffered from Gaza by Islamist terrorists from Hamas. It is the cause of these terrorists, and not that of the citizens of Israeli democracy, that Collboni’s council has supported since then. This municipal history of institutional confrontation undermines the coexistence and security of the Jewish community in Barcelona,’’ ACOM added.