A friend of mine is taking his wife on a European cruise that ends in Barcelona this week. He told me how much they love the Spanish city and how they’d normally stay an extra couple of days there before flying back. “Not this year,” he said, before stressing that they’re “gonna get outta there fast” because of safety concerns.
We had this discussion before this weekend’s violent riots in Barcelona, in which hundreds of people (black clothing, masks, and Palestinian flags prominent among them) looted and damaged dozens of stores, injured at least 15 police officers, and set multiple fires. Acción y Comunicación sobre Oriente Medio (ACOM), an advocacy organization that works to strengthen the relationship between Spain and Israel, posted a video of rioters chanting "Free, free Palestine!" while setting fires in the streets of one of the world's most visited cities.
"Free, free, Palestine", cantan en las calles de Barcelona mientras le meten fuego a la ciudad. "Sionistas", "de derechas", según el Goebbelsno de Sánchez.
— Acción y Comunicación sobre Oriente Medio - ACOM (@ACOM_es) October 26, 2026
ACOM also posted a video of rioters looting stores and causing the same type of mayhem we’re seeing in Paris right now. The organization called it an “intifada,” as you’d be hard-pressed to find even one person among the rioters who would condemn Hamas’ goal of wiping Israel off the map.
For the Spanish left, all of this is evidence that Israel is behind the unrest in Barcelona. Taking his cue from Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who blamed "social-media networks associated with Israel" after tens of thousands of migrants from Morocco breached the border of Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta in July, Pablo Bustinduy, the minister of social rights, consumer affairs and Agenda 2030, went further in a post on X. Bustinduy, a member of the Sumar party (which is even further to the left than Sánchez’s PSOE), said ACOM, which he called “Netanyahu’s hybrid arm to destabilize Spain,” was celebrating the events in Barcelona. He suggested the unrest was Netanyahu’s “reprisal” for the Spanish government’s condemnation of Israel’s “genocide.”
Related: A Primer on What Genocide Is — and Isn't
ACOM called out the absurdity of the claim, posting on X: "We're not celebrating, you shameless liar; we're raising hell because what we warned about is coming true — that Islamism was a threat to all of Europe. The looters keep pulling out the Palestinian flag over and over, and you want to make people believe that Israel is behind it; you can't get any worse, absolutely vile, petty, shameless."
Sánchez, meanwhile, was busy blaming social media again for instigating the violence that resulted in 128 arrests. Santiago Abascal, leader of the nationalist Vox party, wasn’t about to let that go unchecked. With Vox now the third-largest party in Spain’s parliament and looking to make gains in the November 29 snap election, he blamed Sánchez’s government, which enacted a mass amnesty plan this year, for the chaos, saying the government was “incapable of guaranteeing safety on our streets.”
The Socialist mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, might be able to do a better job of keeping the streets safe if he weren’t so obsessed with Israel. Not only is Collboni a proponent of the Israeli genocide lie, but his city council also cut friendship ties with Tel Aviv in 2025. Collboni explained at the time: “The suffering and death in Gaza over the past year and a half, and recent attacks by the Israeli government, make any relationship unviable.” Hamas was pleased with the decision and issued a statement of its own celebrating Barcelona’s decision to “sever ties with the Zionist occupation government and suspend the friendship agreement with the occupying city of Tel Aviv, in solidarity with our Palestinian people who are subjected to a brutal war of extermination.”
It should be remembered that 16 people were killed in Islamist terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils in 2017, and that the 2004 Madrid train bombings, also carried out by Islamist terrorists, killed nearly 200 people. I wonder how many of those rioters in Barcelona chanting “Free, free Palestine” recognize the irony that Israel’s enemies view Spain as occupied land, too, as part of historic Al-Andalus. Instead, they're more likely to believe, as Bustinduy does, that Israel is behind the destabilization of Spain.
Related: Barcelona Horror: Mob Chases French Jews Through City
My friend, who is taking that cruise that ends in Barcelona, happens to be Israeli. He’d love to spend the extra days in the city he loves so much, but it’s now a city where wearing a Star of David could lead to a mob chasing you through the streets, and someone might spit on you for holding an Israeli flag. If Spain wants visitors like him to stay away while it opens its borders to people who hate the country, keeping the Socialists in power on November 29 is the surest way to make that happen.
Editor's Note: The Democrat Party has been infected by socialism, and it's spreading FAST. Democrats are claiming there's nothing to worry about, but we know the truth.
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