Two French Jewish students studying in Villaviciosa de Odón outside Madrid came home to swastikas in their mailboxes. The letters they pulled out read “Ratas judías, Palestina vencerá” [Jewish rats, Palestine will win] and carried Nazi insignia. They weren’t political tracts. They were threats, placed in their homes, meant to send a clear message: Jews are not welcome.
The students, both enrolled at Universidad Europea and Universidad Alfonso X el Sabio, were targeted for one reason only. They are Jewish. Spain’s Federation of Jewish Communities condemned the letters through its Antisemitism Observatory and stressed that what happened was not debate over Israel, but intimidation of Jews living in Spain. The Guardia Civil has opened an investigation, but no suspects have been named.
Maria Royo, who often speaks for the Federation, has described the pattern before. She warned that every time conflict in Israel flares, antisemitism in Spain “dispara de forma brutal” [shoots up brutally]. The data proves her right. Since last year antisemitic incidents have jumped more than three hundred percent. This case is part of that surge.
The president of the Federation, David Obadía, represents a community that has lived this cycle for centuries. Spain expelled its Jews in 1492, only readmitted them formally in the nineteenth century, and still struggles with open antisemitism today. Letters comparing Jewish students to rats, stamped with swastikas, prove how fragile that return has been.
The combination of Nazi symbols with pro Palestinian slogans is not new either. It mirrors what Jewish communities across Europe saw in the 1930s, when international politics was used as a pretext to target Jews locally. Then it led to boycotts, smashed windows, and deportations. Today it begins with threatening notes at a student’s door. The parallels are too close to ignore.
The Federation is demanding that authorities treat this with urgency. Spain’s leaders should not need reminders of their own history. Jews were driven out of this country once before. Allowing Nazi imagery and language to circulate freely on Spanish streets and campuses risks repeating that story.
The two students who pulled those letters from their mailboxes are not just isolated victims of a hate crime. They are the proof that Jewish life in Spain is being marked once again for erasure, and unless the state acts decisively, history will not just repeat itself — it will accelerate.
