Three elderly Israeli-Jewish women, wearing Stars of David and carrying an Israeli flag, were expelled from the Reina Sofía National Museum of Art in Madrid on Sunday.
The women - one of whom is a Holocaust survivor - were verbally harassed by some of the visitors who shouted "genocide!" "child killers!" and "murderers!" - some visitors also said they were "disturbed" by the presence of the three women.
Instead of removing the other visitors, the museum staff asked the women to leave.
A Spanish woman who was accompanying the three Jewish ladies recorded the incident. The video shows her arguing with the staff member over his attempt to make them leave, telling him that they were not doing anything illegal and that, under Spanish law, the museum could not lawfully expel the women.
The guard kept saying that the three old women had to put away their symbols.
The Spanish woman continued to say that this was illegal. "It is unacceptable that something of this nature is happening in official facilities that are linked to the Government of Spain, despite us doing nothing illegal," she said. The museum is a public institution supported by state funds.
Victims removed for displaying Jewish symbols
The woman told OkDiario that the symbols were "totally normal Jewish symbolism, not at all offensive."
"But as soon as we arrived and saw that they were Jewish, we were subjected to overt hostility from the museum staff. It was outrageous, intolerable."
The European Jewish Congress called the incident "deeply troubling and unacceptable."
"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."
"Jewish identity must never become grounds for exclusion," the congress added. "Such conduct demands full clarification, clear accountability, and decisive action to ensure that antisemitism is confronted without ambiguity."
Dana Erlich, Head of Mission at the Israeli Embassy in Spain, said that the Israeli flag is not "provocation," but represents thousands of years of history of the Jewish people.
"It is hypocritical that other flags and displays of disinformation are accepted without any problem in that museum, while my flag, our flag, is considered provocative."
The museum received negative attention already last week for hosting an anti-Israel seminar entitled "Gaza and aestheticicide" on February 10.
"This seminar examines the systematic destruction of Palestinian collective sensibility – what we might call 'aestheticicide' – that has accompanied Israel's genocide and ecocide in Gaza, and considers the conditions of artistic practice in its wake," read the description.
"This conference should not have been held in a public institution that claims to be committed to culture, critical thinking, and human rights," wrote Esther Benarroch, a member of the Spanish Jewish community, in a column in El Español. "Not because the suffering in Gaza does not deserve attention, but because instrumentalizing it through concepts loaded with historical biases and antisemitic resonances does not contribute to peace, justice, and truth."
The Jerusalem Post reached out to the museum and the Spanish Jewish community for comment.