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Mayor of Spanish Village of Mota de Judíos Sounds Defiant Note After Spate of Antisemitic Vandalism
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by Algemeiner Staff
Antisemitic graffiti on the wall of the town hall in the Spanish village of Mota de Judios. Photo: Mayor Lorenzo Rodriguez
Spain’s Jewish community condemned as “intolerable” several acts of antisemitic vandalism that were discovered on Monday in a village that carries the word “Jews” in its name.
The 52 residents of the village in the Castile and León region of northern Spain voted in 2014 to change its name from Matajudíos, which means “Kill Jews,” to Mota de Judíos, which means “Jews’ Hill Camp” and is reputed to have been its original name when it was founded by a group of Sephardic Jews in the 11th century. Plans are currently in motion to build a Sephardic history and memory center in the village.
On Monday morning, the village’s mayor, Lorenzo Rodríguez, shared pictures on social media of several buildings that had been vandalized with antisemitic slogans.
Graffiti scrawled on the entrance to the town hall described Rodríguez as “the mayor who sold out to the Jewish murderers,” accompanied by crossed out Star of David. Other offending slogans included “Juden Raus” (German for “Jews Out”), “Long Live the Catholic Monarchs” and references to Tomas de Torquemada, the fanatical 15th century Dominican friar who served as the first Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition that resulted in the mass expulsion of Jews from the Iberian peninsula.
Rodríguez said he had reported the graffiti to the police. He said that the “cowardly, disgusting, violent and intolerant” attack would not stop the village from opening the Sephardic center next year. He added that those behind the attack had carried out a “direct assault on democracy, on ideas, and on the individual and collective freedom of a village.”
The Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain said the attack and the threats contained in the graffiti were “unacceptable and show the danger of the ideologies that led Europe to disaster.”
It added: “We offer our full support to the mayor of Mota de Judíos and encourage him to continue working to recover the Jewish past. We also hope for peaceful and tolerant coexistence.”
