By Grace Gilson
A pro-Israel group says it is taking legal action against the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid after a staffer ejected three elderly Israeli women who displayed the Israeli flag and Star of David necklaces on its premises.
The incident drew widespread condemnation from Jewish groups and leaders as video from the encounter on Saturday, Feb. 14, circulated online.
The video appears to show two individuals holding large Israeli flags being told to leave by a security guard who told them that visitors were “bothered” by their display, according to video of the confrontation.
The video captured a portion of an incident in which three women — one of whom is reportedly a Holocaust survivor — were accosted by other museum-goers who shouted insults including “genocidal maniacs,” “child killers” and “murderers” at them for displaying the flag and wearing a Star of David necklace, according to the right-wing Spanish outlet OKDiario.
“We are not doing anything illegal,” said one of the women in Spanish in the video. “If I walk around here with a Spanish flag, no one can kick me out.”
It was not clear why the women, who have not been identified publicly, chose to display Israeli flags inside the museum. But the museum has raised concerns among pro-Israel advocates over its programming, which last week included a seminar on “aestheticide” in Gaza, and has previously been the site of pro-Palestinianactivism.
In 2024, the museum changed a program titled “From the River to the Sea” to “Critical Thinking Gatherings” following condemnation from Israel’s museums’ association.
The incident comes against a backdrop of sharp anti-Israel sentiment in Spain, where the government has emerged as one of Europe’s most outspoken critics of Israel over its conduct in Gaza.
The sentiment appears to have driven a rise in antisemitism: In 2024, Spain saw a 60% increase in antisemitic hate crimes, despite an overall drop in hate crimes, according to the Ministry of the Interior.
The Reina Sofía Museum quickly drew condemnation from Jewish leaders and groups in Spain, including the Jewish Community of Barcelona and the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain, which said it had requested an explanation from the museum.
The European Jewish Congress called the expulsion of the Israeli visitors “deeply troubling and unacceptable” in a post on X, adding that the “decision to remove the victims raises serious concerns about discrimination within a public cultural institution.”
“The response from the museum staff is deeply troubling,” wrote the World Jewish Congress in a post on X. “They didn’t remove the people who were harassing them. They removed the people who were targeted with antisemitic abuse.”
Dana Erlich, the chargé d’affaires at the Israeli embassy in Madrid, also criticized the museum.
“It is hypocrisy that other flags and displays of disinformation are accepted without any problem in that museum, while my flag, our flag, is considered provocative,” wrote Erlich in a post on X.
On Monday, Feb. 16, the pro-Israel Spanish group Action and Communication on the Middle East announced it would initiate legal action against the museum, accusing it of a “repeated pattern of political instrumentalization, indirect discrimination, and possible promotion of narratives of hatred toward the State of Israel and the Jewish-Israeli community from a public institution funded by all Spanish taxpayers.”
In a statement shared with the Spanish news agency EFE, the museum said it had requested its security department “immediately open an independent and transparent internal investigation to clarify what happened” and expressed opposition to antisemitism.
“The museum wishes to unequivocally express its commitment to equality, religious freedom, and zero tolerance for any type of violence or discrimination related to antisemitism,” said the statement, which emphasized the “importance that Jewish artists, patrons, and benefactors have had for the institution and its collection, especially in the avant-garde, without whose selfless collaboration the museum as we know it today would be inconceivable.”
Grace Gilson wrote this article for the JTA global Jewish media source.
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