President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer made headlines last week when he floated the possibility of the administration granting asylum to Jews in the UK. While there are many other European countries where Jews increasingly feel unsafe, Spain, the site of a disturbing antisemitic attack on Jewish graves this weekend, should be at the top of the list.
The Times of Israel reported that Trump’s lawyer, Robert Garson, a Jew from England, got the asylum idea after the 2025 Manchester synagogue terror attack. “I thought: Jews are being persecuted in the United Kingdom,” Garson said.
An antisemitic act that is a strong predictor of future danger in a community is cemetery desecration. In Manchester, for example, attackers defaced 100 graves in 2005 at a Jewish cemetery in the heart of the city’s Orthodox community. In a report on another attack on a Jewish cemetery in London a week later, The Guardian said it was the 117th attack on a Jewish cemetery in 15 years. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the last. In 2014, vandals attacked another Jewish cemetery in Manchester, covering it with anti-Semitic graffiti and swastikas. In 2016, attackers smashed 14 headstones at the same cemetery.
Against the backdrop of such attacks on Jewish cemeteries, Jewish groups are condemning the attack on the Jewish section of Les Corts graveyard in Barcelona this past weekend. Over 20 graves were desecrated.
🔴 Barcelone 🇪🇸
— Raph Israël (@raphlesioniste2) January 25, 2026
Le cimetière juif des Corts vandalisé.
Tombes brisées. Pierres arrachées.
Encore un acte antisémite.
Sous couvert de « Gaza »,
on profane des morts juifs en Europe.#Antisémitisme #Espagne #Juifs #LaChuteDelOccident pic.twitter.com/qWwwpZLIgr
The antisemitic vandalism led to the closure of sections of the Jewish cemetery throughout Barcelona. An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman took to X to criticize Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the man I’ve called the most anti-Israel leader in the West, saying: “We condemn the vandalism of the Jewish cemetery in Barcelona. This despicable act is a result of the anti-Israel campaign by the Sánchez government.”
Sánchez supports a Palestinian state while claiming that Israel, which he called a “genocidal state” in parliament in 2024, is “exterminating a defenseless people” in Gaza. He called for Israel to be banned from the Eurovision Song Contest last year and even bemoaned the fact that Spain does not have nuclear weapons when discussing ways his country could pressure Israel.
Related: The West's Most Hostile Leader Toward Israel
Eldad Beck lists other disturbing acts and statements by Spanish politicians in a Jerusalem Post piece titled “Spain: The first case of state antisemitism in the EU.” This included Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz, who publicly endorsed the slogan “from the river to the sea," which is often heard during anti-Semitic protests on U.S. college campuses. Beck writes about the effect that such rhetoric is having in Spain:
That shift is measurable. According to Spain’s Observatory of Antisemitism, antisemitic incidents rose by 321% in 2024 compared to 2023, and by 567% compared to 2022. The Spanish Interior Ministry simultaneously reported that 2025 saw the highest number of jihadist-related arrests in the country’s history, a coincidence Jewish leaders view with growing alarm. However, numbers alone do not explain the pervasive sense of fear in Spain’s small Jewish community of roughly 50,000 people. The deeper problem, activists warn, is the tone set by political leaders.
Spain today faces a reality few would have imagined even a decade ago. What is unfolding is not merely a rise in antisemitic incidents, but a deeper erosion of democratic responsibility, in which hostility toward Jews and toward Israel is treated as a permissible, even virtuous, political position.
Sánchez isn’t the only prime minister fanning the flames of antisemitism. After the horrific Bondi Beach terrorist attack in Australia, Jews booed Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, another supporter of a Palestinian state, at a memorial event for the victims. Their anger was understandable and expressed well by Rabbi Yehoram Ulman of Chabad of Bondi, who told Albanese that his response to the war in Gaza increased antisemitism in Australia. Sky News reported on the conversation:
I told him when a delegation of doctors has arrived in the war zone, and some were killed, immediately without any investigation, [Minister of Foreign Affairs Penny Wong] has blamed [Israel].
I told [Albanese] what kind of interest Israel has to kill them? It is against our own interests.
Australia, too, has faced cases of Jewish cemetery desecration.
Spain's Federation of Jewish Communities linked this weekend’s cemetery attack in Barcelona to a map created by pro‑Palestinian activists, whom Sánchez has a history of inciting, that lists Jewish schools, restaurants, and businesses. How long until we see an escalation from grave desecration to attacks on Jewish people in those establishments, such as we saw in Manchester and during the Bondi Beach Hanukkah shooting?
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