The Reina Sofía museum in Madrid, Spain, which displays Pablo Picasso’s most famous painting “Guernica,” is being sued for allegedly removing three elderly Israeli women, including a Holocaust survivor, because they were wearing Israeli or Jewish symbols.
The pro-Israel, Spanish group Action and Communication on the Middle East said on Monday that it plans to sue the museum for “discrimination and possible promotion of hatred from a public institution.”
The incident on Sunday was part 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,” according to the group.
Museum staff allegedly told the women to leave because they were “wearing a Star of David and an Israeli flag,” Dana Erlich, the head of mission at Israel’s embassy in Madrid, wrote.
The museum is under the authority of the Spanish Culture Ministry.
According to the European Jewish Congress, museum staff told the women to leave “after they were insulted as ‘child killers’ and targeted for displaying Jewish symbols.”
The group said this was “deeply troubling and unacceptable.” Staff told the women that other visitors were “disturbed” by their presence, it said. “Instead of protecting those subjected to antisemitic abuse, the apparent decision to remove the victims raises serious concerns about discrimination within a public cultural institution,” the congress added.
The museum told JNS that it “requested its security department to immediately open an independent and transparent internal investigation to clarify what happened.”
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,” it said.
The Spanish pro-Israel group said that its legal action “will be directed both against the institution and against its highest authority, the museum’s director, Manuel Segade.”
Anti-Israel activism at and by the Reina Sofía Museum was “persistent,” it said, citing a list of displays and actions in recent months. Last week, the museum organized a seminar titled “Gaza and Esteticide,” with texts describing destruction in Gaza as “genocide and ecocide.”
In 2024, the museum allowed the display of the Palestinian flag on its façade within the framework of a series titled “From the river to the sea. International solidarity with Palestine.”
Critics say the slogan referencing the river and the sea is a call for the disappearance of the State of Israel.
Spain is one of four European Union member countries that have intervened in South Africa’s 2023 lawsuit for alleged genocide against Israel, widely understood as an endorsement of the suit.
in May, the country’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, called Israel a “genocidal state.”
