Protesters slam Israeli presence at MRO Aviation Week in Barcelona

By Alyssa McMurtry

OVIEDO, Spain (AA) - Dozens of activists staged a disruptive protest outside Barcelona’s main trade center on Wednesday, slamming the presence of Israeli companies at the MRO Aviation Week event.

Many of the event’s 10,000 attendees walked past a long red carpet made to look like blood, dotted with representations of small bodies to symbolize the children killed in Gaza.

Several protesters also chained themselves to the letters of the event center.

Three Israeli companies, including Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) — the government-owned aerospace and aviation manufacturer that produces military equipment — were invited to the conference in the Spanish city of Barcelona.

Before the protest, more than 100 organizations signed a letter calling for the event’s cancellation due to its implication in the “extermination being committed in the Gaza Strip.”

Protesters say the presence of these companies also makes the city of Barcelona and the government of Catalonia “complicit in the genocide in Gaza.”

“We are here today to say that, from the city of Barcelona, we do not want to normalize this barbarism and to show our total rejection of these types of companies,” Claudia Custodio, the protest’s spokesperson, told local media.

The demonstrators also unfurled papers that included the names of the more than 40,000 people killed in Gaza to remind attendees that “they aren’t numbers, they are people, and that these types of companies and events are contributing to their massacre,” Custodio added.

The protesters also condemned the presence of Lockheed Martin, RTX, and Boeing. Those companies were also explicitly called out by UN experts on June 20 for sending arms to Israel for use in its attacks in the Middle East since October 2023.

Israel has continued a brutal offensive on Gaza since a Hamas attack last year, despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire.

More than 42,700 people, mostly women and children, have been killed, and over 100,300 injured, according to local health authorities.

The Israeli war on Gaza has displaced almost the territory’s entire population amid an ongoing blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its actions in Gaza.