<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>RTVE's Board of Directors will meet this Tuesday to decide whether Spain participates in the Eurovision Song Contest if Israel does. If this is the case, according to the public broadcaster, RTVE President José Pablo López will propose Spain's withdrawal during the meeting.</strong></h4> The Board is composed of fifteen members: five elected by the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), four by the PP (People's Party), two by Sumar (Sumar), and the remaining by Junts (Junts), Esquerra Republicana (Republican Left), PNV (Basque Nationalist Party), and Podemos (Western Union). RTVE sources, reported by the newspaper <em>20 Minutos</em>, have confirmed that the Board of Directors includes a "majority" of those who do not see it as "appropriate" for Israel to participate in the competition due to the serious human rights violations in Gaza. Other public television stations are also faced with the debate between supporting a boycott of KAN, Israel's public television channel, or trying to maintain the contest's supposed neutrality. This is the case for the public television networks of Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Slovenia, which will refuse to participate if Israel does. In this regard, the Dutch broadcaster AVROTROS denounced in a statement the "serious and ongoing human suffering in Gaza" and recalled that Eurovision was born in 1956 to unite Europe after the war. Therefore, if the proposal goes ahead, Spain would become the fifth country to announce its withdrawal from Eurovision if Israel participates. It would also be the first of the Big Five—the five countries that contribute the most financially to the EBU—to make this decision. Last April, according to the public broadcaster's website, RTVE sent a letter to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) requesting the opening of a debate on Israel's participation in the festival. In the statement, it emphasized the need to acknowledge the division of opinions and facilitate a space for reflection among all broadcasters and EBU members. Festival director Martin Green has indicated that Eurovision understands "the deep-rooted concerns and views surrounding the ongoing conflict in the Middle East" and that the festival organizers are consulting with EBU members to "gather opinions on how we manage participation and geopolitical tensions." For now, the EBU has extended the deadline for broadcasters to confirm their participation in the festival, which will be held in Vienna in May, until mid-December. Culture Minister Ernest Urtasun has warned that "we must ensure that Israel does not participate in Eurovision" because cultural and sporting events should not "whitewash genocide." "If we cannot achieve this, Spain must not participate," he added. For his part, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez declared this Monday at the meeting of the PSOE interparliamentary committee that, "until the barbarism ceases, neither Russia nor Israel should be included in any further international competition." Last May, Sánchez warned that, just as Russia cannot participate in Eurovision because of the invasion of Ukraine, Israel “should not do so either” because of the offensive in the Gaza Strip. The day after the festival, the Israeli Minister of Diaspora and the Fight against Antisemitism, Amichai Chikli, referred to the twelve points (the maximum possible) awarded to the Israeli song in Spain through the popular televote. “It seems that the Spanish people have spoken and we have heard the slap in the face here in Jerusalem,” he wrote on the social network X.
