Amid growing global outcry over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, widely condemned by critics as genocide, most Western governments in Europe and the Americas have remained conspicuously silent on the issue. Spain has emerged as a rare exception, positioning itself as one of the most outspoken Western critics of Israel’s actions, positioning itself as an outlier among Western nations.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has pushed for multilateral action to halt global arms trade with Israel, including a high-profile campaign to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement. Spain was also the first and only European Union member state to formally recall its ambassador to Israel, and announced a halt to new arms sales to Israel as early as October 2023.
However, a 2025 investigation from Barcelona’s Delas Centre for Peace Studies reveals a stark gap between this rhetoric and actual trade data. The report finds that military imports from Israel actually increased dramatically after October 2023, totaling €36.7 million ($41.9 million) by February 2025 alone. This included arms, ammunition, tanks, and armored fighting vehicles categorized under standard international trade codes. The report explicitly notes that Spain never imported more Israeli military equipment than it did in the 16 months following the 7 October 2023 attacks.
This pattern shifted only in September 2025, when Sanchez signed into law a formal full arms embargo against Israel, alongside a ban on imports of goods from Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. Unlike the earlier partial pause on new sales licenses, this legislation establishes a formal, blanket legal prohibition on arms trade with Israel.
Eirene de Prada, an international law professor and member of Juristas por Palestina (Lawyers for Palestine), explained that the new legislation marks a formal shift from administrative restraint to binding legal rule. But she warns that broad loopholes, exceptions for pre-existing contracts, and ambiguous regulatory gaps leave the embargo far weaker than its public framing suggests. In comments to Middle East Eye, De Prada accused the Spanish government of deliberate doublespeak: while the embargo sends a strong symbolic statement condemning Israeli actions, regulatory loopholes embedded in the Royal Decree-Law allow trade with Israeli defense firms to continue largely uninterrupted.
Under Spanish legislative rules, a Royal Decree-Law is classified as an emergency measure for extraordinary and urgent need, requiring parliamentary approval within 30 days of enactment. Royal Decree-Law 10/2025, passed in October 2025, justifies the embargo by noting that the extreme humanitarian crisis in Gaza creates an urgent need to block the transfer of defense and dual-use materials that Israel uses against civilian populations.
Alejandro Pozo, an investigator at the Delas Centre, argues that even with its flaws, the legislation represents a meaningful step forward. He notes that the embargo sets a critical global precedent, proving that a full arms embargo on Israel is a politically feasible policy for Western nations. Even so, Pozo confirms that the law leaves all pre-existing military contracts intact and grants Spanish authorities broad discretion to approve exceptions when deemed justified.
Just three months after the law’s passage, the Spanish government exercised one of these exceptions to authorize transfers of defense and dual-use materials for four Airbus-led aeronautical projects, citing the projects’ significant industrial and export potential. The approved transfer included an anti-missile defense system produced by Elbit Systems, an Israeli defense manufacturer widely documented as complicit in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
Pozo explains that Israel’s core interest in trade with Spain is not selling finished weapons to Spanish buyers, but gaining access to Western markets that lower the cost of Israel’s domestic military production and sustain its long-term occupation of Palestinian territories. He added that Israeli defense firms also exploit loopholes in EU trade rules, which allow Spain to trade defense equipment via other EU member states and purchase Israeli weapons manufactured by EU-based Israeli subsidiaries. These transactions are not covered by the current embargo, and account for a large share of Israeli military-related activity in Spain. Many Israeli-designed weapons are produced in Spain by local subsidiaries of Israeli firms or by domestic Spanish manufacturers operating under Israeli production licenses.
To close these gaps, Pozo argues that policymakers must target the financial flows that directly or indirectly fund Israel’s war machine, rather than only regulating direct arms transfers. He calls for sanctions modeled after the sweeping comprehensive sanctions the EU imposed on Russia, which target all core Israeli economic and political interests.
Spain is far from alone in facing this contradiction between anti-Israel rhetoric and continued complicity in what UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has termed the “economy of genocide.” Colombia, another leading critic of Israel’s actions, implemented a national ban on coal exports to Israel that took effect in August 2025. But after the ban went into effect, South Africa – which brought Israel’s case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and co-founded the Hague Group supporting Palestinian legal claims – stepped in to become Israel’s largest coal supplier.
South African Trade Minister Parks Tau has argued that imposing unilateral sanctions on Israel without formal multilateral UN backing violates World Trade Organization non-discrimination rules and exposes South Africa to costly international legal challenges. But Patrick Bond, director of the Centre for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg, rejects this claim. He points to a July 2024 ICJ ruling, later upheld by the UN General Assembly, that explicitly requires all nations to end any form of complicity with Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. Bond argues this ruling creates a binding international legal obligation to restrict trade with Israel, and that South African authorities already have the legal authority to ban such exports under existing “dangerous exports” regulations – no new legislation is required. “The coal export ban could be implemented immediately,” Bond confirmed.
Even in Colombia, where President Gustavo Petro has spearheaded a regional push for sanctions against Israel, untangling long-standing military ties has proven far more complex than banning coal exports. In February 2024, Petro announced his government would end all new arms purchases from Israel and reduce bilateral military cooperation, but Colombian Defence Minister Ivan Velasquez later confirmed that all existing contracts would be honored, including maintenance for Colombia’s fleet of Israeli-built Kfir fighter jets. The Colombian Armed Forces also still rely heavily on the Israeli-made Galil rifle, which was used extensively by Israeli forces in Palestine and Lebanon, and was deployed to suppress left-wing insurgent groups during Colombia’s decades-long civil war.
To break these long-standing ties, Colombia signed a €3.1 billion contract with Swedish defense firm Saab in November 2025 to purchase 17 Gripen E/F fighter jets, which will replace the aging Kfir fleet by 2032. In May 2026, Petro also unveiled a domestically produced rifle to gradually replace the Galil, but the transition is expected to take five years to complete.
A shared vulnerability of both Spain and Colombia’s embargo policies is their vulnerability to reversal by future administrations. In Colombia, President-Elect Abelardo de la Espriella, who takes office in August 2026, has already publicly proposed expanding collaboration with Israeli defense industries. His commitment to expanding extractive mining also threatens to roll back Petro’s coal export ban, which was implemented via presidential decree and has not been enshrined in permanent national legislation.
In Spain, the embargo has greater formal legal standing as a properly enacted law, but it is still not immune to rollback. De Prada explains that a future administration with a parliamentary majority could substantially amend or fully repeal the embargo. It could also weaken the embargo in practice through broad interpretation of the “general national interests” clause that allows for frequent exceptions, or by simply reducing the rigor of regulatory enforcement.
Pozo confirms that if the center-right Partido Popular or far-right Vox win the 2027 national elections, they could easily eliminate the embargo entirely. This would likely be a symbolic political act rather than a response to domestic defense needs, as both parties have openly condemned Sanchez’s Gaza policy. Both parties voted against the embargo in October 2025, with Vox reiterating Israel’s claimed right to self-defense and accusing the Sanchez government of using the embargo as a smokescreen to distract from domestic corruption allegations.
Experts say Colombia’s incoming right-wing administration’s plan to rapidly reset ties with Israel serves as a clear warning to Spain’s current government. De Prada argues that sustained, long-term policy of holding Israel accountable requires far more robust regulatory measures than the current limited embargo. She told Middle East Eye: “Ultimately, the next step must be moving from a limited, reversible embargo to a comprehensive, permanent policy of non-cooperation, non-assistance, and non-recognition, supported by effective parliamentary oversight, administrative transparency, and full supply chain traceability.”
Until that shift occurs, the gap between symbolic political gestures and concrete action, and between public rhetoric and policy practice, remains unmistakeable.