In a shockingly ignorant tweet, Óscar Puente Santiago, the Minister for Transport and Sustainable Mobility in Spain, called on Spanish “patriots” to stand with Vueling against the “Israeli brats” at the center of a controversy over anti-Semitism on a flight to Paris.
Spain’s Witless Minister Of Transport Urges Support For Vueling, Fumes Over “Israeli Brats”
Puente posted the tweet over the weekend, calling “patriots” (patriotas) to support Vueling over the “Israeli brats” (niñatos Israelis).
¿Los patriotas estarán con Vueling?¿los de la Ley y orden con la seguridad aérea?, ¿los xenófobos estarán con la compañía española? ¿o todos juntos haciendo piña estarán con los niñatos Israelis?
In English:
Will the patriots stand with Vueling? Will the law and order supporters stand with aviation safety? Will the xenophobes stand with the Spanish airline? Or will they all stand united behind the Israeli brats?
He has since deleted the tweet.
Why?
Well, maybe because he realized that these students were not Israelis, but French Jews…
Calling Jews “Israelis” or “Zionists” may play well to a xenophobic base, but what a crass mistake, the sort of mistake that gets to the heart of his worldview and exposes a shocking level of bias.
Even if this was satire aimed more at the divisive political divide in Spain, it was in poor taste.
I wrote about this incident in great detail last week and we continue to see two narratives emerging. If anything, I’d say the narrative of the students was weakening since there does not seem to be agreement over what the students were doing. Were they singing? Were they making noises? What was going on?
That still isn’t clear…we are still missing clear video of what transpired onboard.
Did all flight attendants and the captain really rally together to say, “Let’s throw off these kids because they are Jews?”
It’s hard to accept that premise…
Yet why would he police demand (and apparently succeed) in getting the kids to erase their videos? And when I hear tripe like the “Israeli brats” quip from the Transport Minister, I do have to wonder whether it was just anti-Semitic bias, whether explicit or implicit.
CONCLUSION
Ultimately, this entire ordeal is still a mystery. I’m waiting for video or for other passengers to emerge that will either corroborate the student’s version of events or Vueling’s version. Here, the truth is so far apart that I cannot imagine the truth being somewhere in the middle. It appears to me that someone is lying…and Óscar Puente’s lying statement does not make me more sympathetic to Vueling.
You are missing a tonne of context on Spanish domestic politics to understand what this tweet is actually about. It has nothing to do with the Vueling incident, and all to do with the current climate of divisiveness between right- and left-wing parties, compounded by the seemingly endless allegations of corruption (political and financial) against the left-wing government being investigated by police and tried in court. The minister is trying to create more confrontation with the Spanish political right (which he mockingly calls patriots, as if that were an objectively bad thing), something he’s quite adept at on Twitter/X. He wasn’t even addressing the Vueling incident itself, but rather framing it in a way to take a cheap shot at political parties to his right and portray them as agitators, despite him being the prime provocateur in Spanish politics. And I say this as someone who dislikes Oscar Puente, so it’d be easier for me to throw him under the bus on this one.
I appreciate this color. While it doesn’t change my overall assessment of the tweet, context always matters. Thanks, Mike.
Yeah, the guy is a professional political arsonist. He gets carried away in the most childish ways, whether he’s making incendiary remarks about his rivals to ideologically close reporters, or whether he’s making asinine comments on Twitter. To him, it’s all about scoring political points with his base, nothing else matters, not even other people’s dignity. Definitely crass more than class. Don’t think he even realised what he’d typed until it was too late and had already posted it. Bet it was an advisor who pointed out maybe he should leave Jewish kids out of his daily diatribe. And that’s why he deleted the tweet.
Thanks for the heads up – I’ll be keeping an eye on this clown in future. Is it desperation due to PSOE sinking ever lower in the polls, I wonder?
Ministers of Transport , Ministers of Aviation , and , yes , Secretaries of Transportation , are all politicians , first and foremost .
The crew and the passengers can handle all matters between themselves , and never need politicians’ comments .
Politicians never diffuse conflict , they only exacerbate conflict . Remember the Spanish politician who kissed the lady football player ?
Occam’s Razor. Using logic to understand what might have happened which accounts change hourly. Now there are 44 children and eight chaperones? This might alter my earlier opinion concerning lack of supervision. The Israeli brat comment is also tipping the scale.
It appears nothing is consistent with this story and that troubles me
There were many non affiliated passengers on the plane other than the 50 French children. The truth will come out with time.
The fact that the transport minister would feel comfortable making such an antisemitic comment without any investigation is a sign that antisemitism is alive and well in Spain. No one would make such a comment without knowing that he has support.
given how far apart the versions are, saying nothing – despite the visceral desire otherwise – is the best course of action.
The airline should settle w/ the travelers and be done w/ it.
Exactly .
I personally think Israelis should be ostracized and punished until the genocide stops. I take delight in seeing how this lot were treated. May they not be the last.
I personally think anyone who posts anonymously on a blog using the pseudonym “Sam” should be tortured and executed for their obviously racist bigoted uninformed opinions.
Except they weren’t Israeli’s, Sam. They were French Jews. Sorry to confuse you with the facts.
And I take delight in watching the people of Gaza suffering because of their decision to accept terrorists as their leaders. And their failure to fight against them after October 7th.
The hostages left aren’t coming back alive, if anything Trump and Israel have been too easy on them.
Easy , don’t come to Spain, we don’t really care, bye!
Easy, don’t come to Spain, we don’t really care, bye!
The question of the police demanding video be deleted from phones is based on a 2015 Spanish law that prohibits people from taking photos/video of police officers (to protect them). They can ask for it to be deleted, arrest or fine you, so not necessarily a “cover up”, pretty much standard operating procedure for Spanish police…
What a horrible law!
Yep: the current party in power campaigned to repeal it while in the opposition, but haven’t done it in the 7+ years they’ve been in government. Now, the leader of the opposition (whose party pushed for the law to be enacted when they were in government) is vowing to repeal this very law. Madness! Or par for the course in today’s political climate…
The Israeli Zionist brats should have been sent home, or better yet sent to Gaza and let them starve along with all the others who the Jews are starving or even better put them all on a dinghy and let them try to row across the Med. The other Arab countries should carpet bomb Israel and very single Zionist into dust.
Just curious, since there are 2+ million Israeli citizens who aren’t Jewish are they also “starving” the Gazans or is it only the Jews? Thought so.
Obviously NOT this Dave Edwards.
Might want to look into the ability for people to use the same name.
Thanks Matt
Not obvious at all, it’s exactly the sort of thing Douchebag Dave Edwards (you) would write. According to you it’s okay to post unedited vile disgusting racist bigoted drivel but not use the same pseudonym as someone else. Interesting set of completely hypocritical morals, just like all right wing morons (which is all of them).
Interesting Matthew that YOU chose to change the pseudonym (originally “Dave Edwards”) in the post above. “Dave Edwards” is not copyrighted and likely is the real name of thousands of people. After all your comments about not editing or ignoring (not posting) comments here, it’s hypocritical. With everything else you allow in your comments section, it’s completely hypocritical. And to do so at the behest of (Douchebag) Dave Edwards, who posts more inappropriate comments here, by far, than anyone else, is particularly galling.
There’s only one Dave Edwards here. If you want to attack him, by all means go right ahead…his viewpoints are often disgusting and misinformed. Just don’t do the stupid “Dim Tunn” games like they do on OMAAT.
Matthew, understood, thank you. In the context of “anything goes”, it’s interesting that “stupid “Dim Tunn” games” are (apparently) the ONE thing that’s unacceptable here but it’s your bat and ball so you get to make the rules.
Thanks for posting your opinion of Douchebag Dave Edwards although as usual you’re being way too polite; his viewpoints are ALWAYS disgusting, misinformed and repugnant and strongly indicative of severe psychological problems and his frequency is indicative of an otherwise empty life. Probably just a matter of time until we read about him committing crimes against humanity, including mass murders and/or targeted violence.
There’s no scenario where Vueling “win” in this situation.
If their staff were, in fact, openly and actively anti-semitic, their best move is settle, apologize, and move on. IAG have good PR people who’d I assume would have made sure this already happened (if this were the case).
If the real problem was with the kids, or more precisely their chaperones, then Vueling are in a tougher place, because there is no “winning” in a public fight with children, regardless of their background.
I’m still surprised that IAG’s PR folks out of London haven’t already shut this conversation down.
The tweet (and several of the responses here) reveals all that one needs to now about this situation. Spain has been in the grip of antisemitism for 600 years and the fact that the average Spanish person is still deeply resentful of Jews despite never having met one – several centuries after the mass murder and torture of Spain’s once large Jewish Community in the Inquisition, and the expulsion of every one of the survivors, should be ample illustration of how Jew hatred is completely woven into Spanish culture. It does not matter whether the kids are French, Spanish, Israeli or otherwise, because to the Pilot and Cabin Crew – as well as the hateful Spanish people supporting them – they were nothing but Jews and Gaza is merely the most convenient way to rationalize what has been the status quo in Spain for centuries and the latest justification for hating Jews that fits neatly into contemporary Spanish social mores.
Stereotyping basically all Spanish nationals as antisemitic isn’t that different from what you’re accusing them of. The reality is that the political landscape in the country is very complicated, with some people wanting independence from Madrid (not just the Catalans or Basques – there are even a few people wanting to re-establish the Reino de León!), some political parties receiving support from the likes of Iran and Venezuela (Zapatero’s career certainly is very interesting), some of the elites having inherited money and connections from their Francoist ancestors, some ‘progressive’ socialist institutions in Catalonia having certain historical links to prominent NSDAP members who moved there because they wanted to hedge their bets in terms of the outcome of WWII etc.
There’s no sense in reducing all that complexity to a monolithic idea of an antisemitic nation.
I would say that pointing out the 600 years of antisemitism ingrained in Spanish culture is very much different from the blood libel that a good many Spanish people — demonstrably including the pilot, cabin crew, and a great many leftist Spanish politicians (along with the supporters of all of them — use to vilify Jews because there is 600 years of historical objective evidence on one side, and nothing but ignorant innuendo on the other side. Jews did not actually poison wells, spread bubonic plague, murder Christ, spread bolshevism, start World War I, or murder children for entertainment, but Spain absolutely did torture, murder, and expel Jews in every part of the Spanish Empire in which they lived during the Inquisition, Franco was essentially a Nazi without any Jews left to torment in Spain, and today the Spanish left makes Jews whipping boys for every possible injustice in the world and engages in crude bigotry (such as Puente’s tweet) despite having a population that is essentially Jew free due to centuries of systemic persecution. The unique thing that led to the violent persecution of the Jewish kids on the plane isn’t that they were violently persecuted in Spain, but that they were present in Spain to be persecuted in the first place, since Spain is essentially Jew free due to a centuries long policy of excluding Jews due to its historic racism.
So it is indeed too much to say that every Spaniard is antisemitic, but it is not at all too much to say that Spanish culture is shot through with antisemitism and that the murder and expulsion of Spanish Jews was the essential building block of a hegemonic Spanish nation which came to occupy and deracinate Catalonia and Euskadi as well before it became subsumed by Francoism where it still maintains a foot in that pool.
Throwing out blanket statements about antisemtitism is one way to weaponize the word, thats’ for sure.
This definitely was aimed at mocking the right wing, particularly the likes of Vox which, much like their American counterparts, seem to be very sympathetic towards Israel.
Regardless of the specifics of the case, the finger-wagging about law and order and aviation security is absolutely comical coming from a member of the government responsible for the Delcygate scandal.
Wait, Vox is “right wing”? Since when? It’s absolutely 100% leftist.
Are you sure you’re not confusing them with Podemos? Obviously there are certain similarities between the far left and far right…
It’s very right wing. Are you okay?
the bigger issue is the terrorist captain.
He should be in gitmo or better yet, Alligator Alcatraz
Flight instructors will train anyone who pays for the lessons. It’s not their job to screen visa applicants, or to conduct background checks and psychological testing on students.
When they keep flying the plane into iconic America buildings in simulators, there is a personal responsibility to report them.
No different than calling ICE when you see 5 Hispanics outside a Home Depot looking for work.
Israel is a pariah, terrorist state and the cause of all these problems.
The longer this goes on the worse the airline and Spain end up looking.
It’s fine, stay away, they won’t miss you.
How ‘patriotic’ is it to allow 20% of your two biggest national airlines (IB, VY) to be owned by the Qatari government?
Well done to Óscar Puente Santiago, badly behaved brats are badly behaved brats but no doubt a bunch of Israeli ones thought they could get away with their behaviour by playing the Jewish/ this is anti-semitic card. The Vueling crew did exactly the right thing and they are to be admired.
Spain. The land of the Inquisition.
Don’t like the daegos but this is a rare Spain W. Go Vueling !