The Diplomat
The Israeli Embassy issued a statement yesterday describing as a “brutal and anti-Semitic act” the invasion of the lobby of the Hotel Cortes, which is linked to Israeli capital and located on Santa Ana street in Barcelona.
In the communiqué, Ambassador Rodica Radian-Gordon calls for “unequivocal condemnation of aggression against Jewish citizens, whether Spanish or Israeli, their synagogues and their property”.
The Mossos d’Esquadra reported that between 90 and 100 people taking part in a demonstration in Barcelona in favour of Palestine entered the lobby of the Hotel Cortes, owned, according to the demonstrators, by an Israeli tycoon. The business daily ‘Expansión’ published in 2021 that the Israeli investment group Nitsba bought this two-star establishment from businessman Rafael González Bonilla.
The demonstrators, activists from different movements, including the Sindicat de Llogateres i Llogaters, gained access to the balconies of the façade, removed the flags of various countries that were flying on it and replaced them with Palestinian flags.
With this action, they intended to denounce the “genocide of Palestine” and the international inaction in the face of Israel’s attacks.
The Mossos said that after an hour inside the establishment, the demonstrators left on their own.
Numerous members of the Mossos public security and public order police, as well as members of Barcelona’s Guardia Urbana, were deployed in the area.
The Jewish community of Barcelona, for its part, in another communiqué, demanded that the Catalan authorities “roundly” condemn the aggressions against their property, following the “attack” suffered by the hotel. They also stressed that “blaming” all Jews or Israelis for what is happening in Israel is “anti-Semitism” and “racism”.
“All Catalan Jews or all Israelis are not responsible for what is happening in Israel and the Gaza Strip, nor for the suffering of the Palestinian population under the rule of the terrorist group Hamas, nor for the suffering of the Israeli and Palestinian populations as a result of their terrorist actions,” the Barcelona Jewish community said in its statement.
