Dear Minister Puente,
When a group of French Jewish students flying from Valencia to Paris was removed from a Vueling flight, reportedly for singing in Hebrew, you responded on X with the following rhetorical question:
Will the patriots stand with Vueling? Will the law enforcement forces stand with air safety? Will the xenophobes be with the Spanish company? Or will they all stand united behind the Israeli brats?
We cannot answer for the people of Spain, but we can say unequivocally that White Rose Magazine stands not only with the “Israeli brats,” as you so crudely put it, but with all Israelis regardless of faith—and with the Jewish people in France, in Israel, and around the world. We also stand with truth, fairness, and the foundational principle that government officials must rise above bigotry, not amplify it.
While the flight crew claims the students “disrupted” the safety briefing, passengers indicate they were targeted for singing—even just speaking—in Hebrew. What is clear is that you, the Transport Minister of Spain, chose to reduce a group of French teenagers, none of whom are Israeli citizens, to a caricature based solely on the language they spoke and the nationality you projected onto them.
That is textbook anti-Semitism.
In a just world, such a statement from a government minister would be followed swiftly by a retraction and a resignation. Instead, you doubled down, fueling a fire you helped ignite. For a representative of a Western democracy, and the successor to Europe’s last openly fascist regime, that is unacceptable. You also deleted your post once the condemnations began, indicating that you do not even have the courage to stand behind your bigotry.
Further, the incompetence in your ministry that allowed Iván Chirivella, the pilot in question, to fly commercial airliners is also unacceptable. A man who trained Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, two of the 9/11 hijackers, and had his U.S. work permit revoked on account of that fact, regardless of his “innocence,” should never be rewarded with such a privileged position.
If the removal of these students is confirmed to have been discriminatory, Vueling Airlines must be held to account. But, regardless of the airline’s motives, your public framing of the event was driven not by facts, but by prejudice—and worse, you invited the Spanish people to join you in that prejudice.
Your country’s history of prejudice against Jews is a dark one. When the bubonic plague arrived in Spain in 1348, massacres of the supposedly responsible Jews followed throughout Barcelona, Zaragoza, and other Catalán cities, soon spreading across Iberia. In 1391, mobs slaughtered thousands of Jews in Sevilla, then commanded the weeping survivors to accept baptism; the many who refused were sold to the Muslims as slaves. That atrocity sparked a “holy war” against the Jews which resulted in thousands of forced baptisms. With the fall of Granada in 1492, the Catholic Monarchs and their Inquisition demanded the expulsion of all Jews who would not convert. Many of those who did—and the descendants of those forced converts from 101 years earlier—the conversos, would be tortured and burned alive for fear that their adherence to Catholic orthodoxy was insufficient.
Even today, Sephardic Jews still say prayers for their brothers and sisters imprisoned and murdered by the Spanish Inquisition, as if it had just happened.
You owe the people of Spain, and the Jewish community in particular, an apology. And you owe your office your resignation.
Anti-Semitism has no place in foreign diplomacy. Bow your head in shame, Minister. Then do the decent thing and step down.
Sincerely,
White Rose Magazine
White Rose Magazine was named in honor of Sophie and Hans Scholl’s underground Christian press, which printed anti-Nazi pamphlets during the Second World War at the University of Munich; Sophie, Hans, and all of their associates were executed for their bravery in 1943.
