Mayor of Barcelona barred from entering Israel, hours ahead of planned visit

22 August 2025, 11:34 am

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Now-mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni speaks at the headquarters of the Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC) in Barcelona on May 28, 2023 after the local and regional elections held in Spain. (Lluis Gene/AFP)

The mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, has been denied entry into Israel over anti-Israel comments he has made in the past, according to Hebrew media reports.

Collboni had been scheduled to arrive in Israel tonight, Ynet reports, but was informed at the last minute that the Population and Immigration Authority had decided to bar him from entering.

Collboni’s visit to the country, had it not been canceled, would have included a stop at Yad Vashem and meetings with the Palestinian Authority, Channel 12 says.

The decision to bar his entry comes some three months after Barcelona’s city council voted to cut institutional ties with the Israeli government and suspend its friendship agreement with Tel Aviv over the war in Gaza.