Tens of thousands march in Barcelona and Rome to protest Israel’s campaign in Gaza

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Tens of thousands of people marched in Barcelona on Saturday and big crowds turned out in Rome for a second day of Italian protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

Protests in Spain’s second-largest city as well as in Madrid were called weeks ago, while demonstrations in Rome, and later Lisbon, followed widespread anger after the Israeli interception of a humanitarian aid flotilla that had set sail from Barcelona in a bid to break the blockade of the Palestinian territory.

Over 40 Spaniards, including a former Barcelona mayor, were among the 450 activists that Israel removed from the flotilla’s boats this week.

Italy already saw more than 2 million people rally on Friday across the country in a one-day general strike to support the Palestinians in Gaza.

Spain has seen an upsurge of support for Palestinians in recent weeks while its left-wing government intensifies diplomatic efforts against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government. Protests against the presence of an Israeli-owned cycling team repeatedly disrupted the Spanish Vuelta last month, while Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called the destruction in Gaza a “genocide” and asked for the ban of all Israeli teams from international sporting events.

The calls for protests in Southern Europe come as Hamas said it has accepted some elements of the plan laid out by U.S. President Donald Trump to end the two-year war, which has left Gaza’s largest city in famine and stirred accusations of genocide against Israel.

Big rally in Barcelona

Barcelona’s town hall said police estimated that 70,000 turned out for Saturday’s demonstration.

People packed Barcelona’s wide Passeig de Gracia, the city’s main central boulevard. Many families turned out along with people of all ages, carrying Palestinian flags. Hand-held signs bore messages like “Gaza hurts me,” “Stop the Genocide,” and “Hands off the flotilla.”

While the protests will likely not sway Israel’s government, protesters hope they could inspire other demonstrations and encourage European leaders to take a harder line against Israel.

María Jesús Parra, 63, waved a Palestinian flag after making an hourlong trip from another town to Barcelona. She wants the European Union to act against what she described as the horrors she watches on TV news.

“How is it possible that we are witnessing a genocide happening live after what we (as Europe) experienced in the 1940s?” Parra said. “Now nobody can say they didn’t know what was happening.”

Protests in Rome criticize Meloni

The protest in Rome followed a route by the Colosseum. The organizers — three Palestinian organizations along with local unions and students — claimed that 1 million joined. There were no official estimates.

At Piazza San Giovanni, protesters chanted and applauded the name of Francesca Albanese, an Italian who is the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories and a vocal critic of Israel.

Although the organizers had requested that only Palestinian flags be carried, there were some banners praising the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas. One read, “October 7, Day of Palestinian Resistance,” a reference to the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel that sparked the war, while another large flag read “Death, death to the IDF,” a reference to the Israel Defense Forces. A group also chanted the same slogan, state broadcaster RAI reported.

Opposition lawmaker Riccardo Magi, secretary of the center-left Piu Europa (more Europe) party, who was among the marchers, took Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government to task for its refusal to recognize a Palestinian state, following the example of Spain, France, the U.K. and some other Western countries.

“Meloni cannot continue with this obscene victimhood: these are spontaneous demonstrations against the inaction and complicity of her government. She must acknowledge this and begin working diplomatically for peace,” Magi told Italian media.

The protests in Madrid and Lisbon are to follow later on Saturday. There are also protests expected across many other Spanish cities.

Smaller rallies took place in Athens and Skopje, North Macedonia. Greek police believe a bigger gathering and march will take place Sunday to coincide with a pro-Israeli one. The two protests are separated by some 3 kilometers (2 miles) and police will be on hand to prevent the pro-Palestinian march to the Israeli Embassy, as as happened on previous occasions.

The war in Gaza started after Hamas’s attack in October 2023, which left around 1,200 people dead, while 251 others were taken hostage. Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has so far killed over 67,000 people and wounded nearly 170,000 others, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government. U.N. agencies and many independent experts view its figures as the most reliable estimate of wartime casualties.

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Associated Press writer Demetris Nellas in Athens, Greece, contributed to this report.