After the city council of Santiago de Compostela, which is the capital of Spain's northwestern region of Galicia, adopted a motion to boycott Israel last year, the Israeli carrier El Al reportedly canceled plans to provide a direct flight connection to Santiago.
The newspaper 'La Voz de Galicia' reported on Wednesday that the Spanish branch of El Al had negotiated with tourist officials from Galicia over opening a direct flight between Santiago and Tel Aviv, but that talks failed following the passing in November of a motion in the city council in favor of boycotting Israel.
Tourism is a major source of income in Galicia, where nearly one in two workers under the age of 25 is unemployed. Famously, Santiago de Compostela is the destination of the Catholic pilgrimage route known as the Way of St. James. It attracts more than 250,000 pilgrims and tourists annually to Santiago.
Walter Wasercier, the director of El Al’s Spain operations, told the newspaper that he had personally pushed for opening the flight this summer. Some 350,000 Israeli tourists visit Spain annually.
Marta Lois, Santiago’s alderwoman for tourism, denied that any talks on opening a flight to Israel had taken place and said that in any case they would not have been sabotaged by a call to boycott Israel. But the Galician Association for Friendship with Israel told the Voz de Galicia paper that El Al opened in April a flight to Valencia instead of Santiago as a direct result of the boycott motion.
ACOM, a Madrid-based, pro-Israel group which is fighting the boycott campaign against Israel in Spain, blamed Santiago’s far-left ruling party of running the city “with ineptitude.”
