President of Madrid Jewry Says Spanish Right Has Launched Anti-semitic Campaign

The president of the Madrid Jewish community charged today that Spanish extreme right-wing organizations have launched a campaign to abolish the recently promulgated government edict granting Spanish Jews religious freedom.

Pierre Haliava told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a telephone interview today that the campaign was being conducted by organizations such as “Cecede” and “Defense of Hispanic Thought” and by the newspaper “The iberian Cross.”

According to Haliava, the organizations demand “the wiping out of the Jewish banks and press by the physical extermination of its members.” He said the Madrid Jewish community has appealed to the government to put an end to these attacks, citing Article 2 of the Spanish constitution which grants Jews religious freedom.

Haliava said the Jewish community was not adversely affected so fare by the recent nomination of Admiral Carrero Blanco as head of government. But he recalled that the Admiral wrote a book several years ago titled “The Tower of Babel” in which he stated that “the three crusades of the Franco regime are against the Masons. Communism and Judaism.”

Haliava said the new Minister of Interior, Carlos Arias Navarro “had good relations with the Jewish community when he was prefect of Madrid” and “that does not seem to have changed.”

MADRID JEWS TO PROTEST

He said the Jewish community so far has detected no anti-Israel nuances in the foreign policy of the new Foreign Affairs Minister Laureano Lopez Rodo.

According to Haliava, the best way to gauge the government’s attitude toward Jews is the ease with which Jews’ passports are renewed. He said there have been no problems so far.

He said the Madrid community will lodge a protest with the Interior Ministry over the alleged marking of the word “Jew” in the passport of the Spanish diplomat, Romero Rothschild, by a Spanish consular official in Stockholm.

(The Spanish Foreign Ministry in Madrid has dismissed as “pure fantasy this report. The Ministry said that it had no knowledge that such a person exists.

(This information was contained in a cable to the Spanish Embassy in Washington in response to inquiries by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. A JTA dispatch from Vienna last week quoted Rothschild’s description of the incident and said he displayed the passport. Later information received by the JTA in New York identified the Spanish official in Stockholm as Ramon Ortis Fernandes.

(Speaking in the name of the Spanish Ambassador, Angel Sagaz, Embassy press aide Jaime Albarracin-Fox told the JTA today that his government’s cable from Madrid declared that it had investigated at the Spanish Embassy in Stockholm and its consulate in Goteborg and that “they had no knowledge whatsoever of such an incident.”)

Haliava said that the majority of Spanish Jews are of French or Moroccan origin. The present Jewish population numbers 3000 in Barcelona, 2000 in Madrid and smaller communities in Malaga, Palma and Mallorca.