ACOM, a pro-Israel Spanish group, is exploring legal action against the city council of Valencia, Spain’s third-largest city, after it passed a pro-BDS resolution.
The city council of Valencia approved a motion last week to boycott Israeli citizens and companies. The resolution calls for the city to formally adhere to the BDS movement and declare it is “free of Israeli apartheid.”
The measure was promoted by the far-left Podemos political party, which recently supported the PSOE’s (the Spanish socialist party) efforts to oust former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in a “no confidence” vote and replace him with socialist leader Pedro Sanchez.
ACOM said the motion violates the Spanish Constitution and promotes discrimination based on religion, ethnicity and national origin.
“We informed the local press of the illegality of the BDS campaign, detailing dozens of judicial cases won by ACOM in the Spanish Courts that proved the unconstitutionality of exclusionary measures,” the group said. “We also engaged the support of leading figures of the local civil society and Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo, the prestigious legal firm that represents ACOM, to explain the judicial consequences of violating the common framework of coexistence and promoting discrimination.”
Over the last few years, Spanish courts, including the Supreme Court, have declared some 16 boycott motions passed by municipalities as unconstitutional.
“ACOM’s legal department is studying the whole declaration and the legal process to denounce the unconstitutionality of the agreement, considering the most appropriate legal course of action, as we have done on tens of cases over the last months and years,” said the group.
