Spain Condemns Antisemitic Parade

Spain responded on Wednesday to an Israeli protest over an anti-Semitic carnival parade that featured, among other outrages, a float that looked like a gas chamber and gun-carrying Nazis, AFP reports.

Spain’s Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya condemned the event.

“Horrified at the carnival parade in Campo de Criptana,” Gonzalez Laya wrote on her official Twitter account.

“I totally reject any banalization of the Holocaust,” and added that “following contact with the organizers, they have apologized to the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain. It is essential to keep teaching about the memory of the Holocaust.”

The Israeli embassy in Madrid tweeted on Tuesday: “We condemn the Campo de Criptana carnival’s vile and repugnant trivialization of the Holocaust, which mocks the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis.”

The parade in Spain was the second such incident this week after a Belgian town earned a stiff rebuke from the European Commission over similar anti-Semitic themes at a folk festival.

Unlike officials in Aalst, Belgium, who insisted that the blatant anti-Semitism was just “irreverent” humor and refused to alter the presentations, the town council of Campo de Criptana admitted it was wrong.

They said permission for the act had been granted on the understanding that it would honor the dead of the Holocaust.

“We share the criticisms that have been expressed,” they added in a statement quoted by the U.K. Guardian. “If the aim was to commemorate the victims, it’s obvious the attempt fell short.”

According to the local Cadena Ser radio station, the town’s mayor said, “I agree that it doesn’t feel like a very carnival-type theme. I don’t think it will happen again.”