Spain will boycott next year’s Eurovision Song Contest if Israel takes part, public broadcaster RTVE, which is charged with selecting the country’s entry for the event, says.
While other European nations have threatened to pull out of the contest, Spain is the first of the so-called “big five” nations, which provide the most funding for the event, to do so.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the organizer of Eurovision, is set to decide whether Israel will take part in the 2026 edition at its general assembly in December.
If EBU members decide to keep Israeli public broadcaster KAN as a participant, “RTVE would have to carry out the threat of withdrawing from the contest for the first time in history,” the Spanish broadcaster says in a statement.
The decision comes a day after Spanish Culture Minister Ernest Urtasun said Spain should boycott the event if Israel takes part, due to its military offensive against the Hamas terror group in Gaza.
Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in May after the last edition of Eurovision that Israel should be excluded because of its military campaign in Gaza, just as Russia has been left out since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
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