Cultural figures including 4 Nobel laureates back Barcelona's suspension of ties with Israel

An open letter signed by more than 50 cultural figures from around the world, including four Nobel laureates, has praised the mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau for her decision to suspend institutional ties with Israel.  

Colau wrote to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on February 8 stating that relations, including Barcelona's twinning agreement with Tel Aviv and Gaza, would be halted until Israeli authorities put an end "to the systematic violation of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian population." 

The open letter backing the decision has been signed by actors such as Susan Sarandon, Viggo Mortensen and Stephen Rea and musicians including Marianne Faithful, Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno. 

Four Nobel Prize winners added their signatures to the letter: the 2022 Nobel laureate for literature Annie Ernaux; Nobel Peace Prize winners Mairead Maguire and Jody Williams, and George P. Smith, who received the chemistry prize. 

The letter "salutes" Ada Colau and says "Barcelona's decision should inspire institutions worldwide to end their own involvement in sustaining regimes of oppression."  

Other signatories include filmmakers Ken Loach and Fernando Meirelles, singer-songwriter Christy Moore, authors Arundhati Roy and Naomi Klein, and Judith Butler, the American philosopher and gender theorist who was awarded the 2021 Catalonia International Prize. 

Political activists from the US, South Africa, Palestine and Argentina also signed the letter which concludes by commending the "human rights campaigners who worked tirelessly and selflessly" to bring about the mayor's decision. 

Colau's letter to the Israeli PM explained that a federation of over 100 Catalan social organizations and associations had presented a petition to the City Council under the banner 'Barcelona says NO to Apartheid, Barcelona say YES to human rights'. 

Council scrutiny 

Barcelona City Council is to hold an extraordinary plenary session on the mayor's decision after councilors from four opposition parties registered a request to do so on Monday. 

Members of Junts, Ciudadanos, the People's Party and Valents demand the council "urgently and immediately reestablish relations with Israel and the twinning agreement between Barcelona and the cities of Tel Aviv and Gaza." 

As the parties together have more than eleven councilors, the minimum number necessary for a proposal like this to go ahead, their request for a session will be granted. 

They addressed their letter to mayor Colau "in response to the unilateral decision" that she announced last Wednesday. 

Members of Barcelona's Jewish community accused the mayor of "sophisticated anti-Semitism" after the suspension of ties with Israel.