The Spanish government has awarded Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Palestine, one of its highest civilian honours for her work “documenting and denouncing violations of international law in Gaza".
Ms Albanese received the Order of Civil Merit from Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez at a ceremony on Thursday.
“Public responsibility brings with it a moral obligation not to look the other way,” Mr Sanchez said. “It is an honour to bestow the Order of Civil Merit on a voice that upholds the conscience of the world.”
Ms Albanese, an Italian human rights lawyer, has been a strong critic of Israel and its war on Gaza. She was in Madrid to promote her book When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words and Wounds of Palestine.
The US imposed sanctions on Ms Albanese after she called for the International Criminal Court to investigate US and Israeli companies and citizens she says are involved in rights breaches. She has also been threatened with arrest in Germany for her criticism of Israel.
Mr Sanchez has written to the EU to ask it to block the US sanctions against Ms Albanese, telling officials they “represent a very worrying precedent that compromises the independent workings of institutions that are essential to international justice”.
The Spanish socialist leader is also the EU's most vocal critic of Israel and in the past has convened Arab and European nations to increase pressure on Israel to end its war on Gaza and its push to annex the occupied West Bank. Spain was among the first European countries to recognise the state of Palestine in 2024.
Ms Albanese also visited the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid to see Picasso’s Guernica. The famed anti-war painting represents his condemnation of the Nazi bombing of the Basque town in 1937. Ms Albanese compared the destruction in the painting to Israel's actions in Gaza.
She criticised the ceasefire in the enclave as a pretext “for the world to take its eye off Gaza and for it to be forgotten about”.
