Spanish Lawmaker Decries ‘Jewish Market’ Budget

By JTA February 7, 2014

A pro-Israel Spanish politician apologized for using the term “Jewish market” in describing budget negotiations.

Jose Antonio Monago, the president of the local government of the Spanish autonomous region of Extremadura, said his statement was inappropriate but had been taken out of context.

Monago, in an apology appearing Thursday in the Europa Press news agency, had said in an earlier statement that “discussions about the budget must not turn into a Jewish market.”

“I did not mean to cause any offense with this expression,” he said, adding that he is “publicly apologizing to the Jewish community.“

In a statement Thursday, the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain, or FCJE, accepted Monago’s apology. “FCJE values the apology of the president of the Extremadura and thanks him for making them in connection with the unfortunate phrase,” the umbrella group wrote.

Monago visited Israel last year, calling it “a role model for the entire world and especially for Europe.”

At the end of his trip, he wrote an op-ed for the local el Periodico Extremadura in which he praised Israel for being a world leader in science and medicine and called its president, Shimon Peres, “one of the world’s most brilliant leaders.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO