• Spanish government funding to Israeli, Palestinian, and Spanish NGOs is primarily provided through the Agency for International Cooperation and Development (AECID), a subdivision of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Spanish Cooperation Office in Jerusalem oversees projects funded through AECID.
  • Additional NGO support comes from Spain’s Autonomous Communities and Regions. For example, the 2008 NGO Bilbao Initiative promoted political warfare by accusing Israel of “apartheid, colonization and occupation” and calling for further demonization strategies at Durban II.
  • Many of the NGOs funded by Spain use the language of human rights and peace to promote the Palestinian narrative and political warfare against Israel.
  • Spain is one of the least transparent European countries in terms of funding for NGOs. On February 18, 2009, NGO Monitor submitted a request for information on NGOs and AECID-funded projects, but did not receive a response.
  • As reported by Palestinian Media Watch, the Spanish government was identified as a sponsor of an ad on PA TV (January 6, 2011), promoting the boycott of Israeli goods. A representative of Spain told Channel 2 TV (Israel) that “the Spanish government logo was used without our knowledge.”
  • Using public documents and media reports, NGO Monitor identified Spanish NGO allocations and project details, including the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), the Applied Research Institute Jerusalem (ARIJ), and Breaking the Silence, among others. No information was found on the processes used to evaluate and approve this NGO funding.
  • As part of a project funded by the Basque government, Spanish NGO MEWANDO published a newsletter utilizing “apartheid” and “genocide” rhetoric and featuring a cartoon depicting an African-American lynching victim and a Jewish child in the Holocaust as “Palestinians.”
  • The municipality of Barcelona provided €56,000 for the March 2010 Russell Tribunal on Palestine, which calls for “existing legal actions and campaigns in the context of BDS to be stepped up and widened within the EU and globally.”
  • For detailed analyses of the activities of European government funded political NGOs and their role in political warfare, see NGO Monitor’s website.

Spain Essentials: