“Anti-Zionism, anti-Israeli attitudes, anti-Semitism and justification of the Holocaust are a way of life in Spain,” Laborda said while visiting Madrid’s Conservative synagogue, Congregation Bet-El. Laborda is very close to the Jewish community in Spain.

While at the synagogue, Laborda said that the anti-Jewish bias is rooted in Spanish history, beginning with the Spanish Inquisition and expulsion of Jews in 1492 to the 1939 through 1975 Franco pro-Arab dictatorship. He also linked anti-Semitism to an “infantile ideological anti-Americanism” and accused the country’s leaders of caring more about opinion polls than about European history.