By: Fern Sidman

By any reasonable political calculus, Spain should not now be manufacturing aircraft and drones embedded with Israeli technology. Only two months ago, Madrid thundered that it was adopting what it called “urgent measures to stop the genocide in Gaza,” a sweeping legislative framework that banned the trade of military and dual-use products from Israel, alongside the import and even advertising of goods connected to what Spain terms “illegal Israeli settlements.” And yet, as Israel National News (INN) reported on Wednesday, Spain’s cabinet has quietly granted Airbus—one of the country’s industrial crown jewels—an extraordinary exemption to continue producing platforms that rely on Israeli know-how.

The revelation, first reported by Reuters, is not a mere bureaucratic footnote. It is a vivid illustration of the collision between ideology and economic reality, between the moral grandstanding of Europe’s new anti-Israel posture and the cold arithmetic of jobs, exports and industrial power.

In September, Spain’s ruling coalition—composed of the Socialist Party (PSOE) and its hard-left junior partner Sumar—pushed through legislation declaring an embargo on Israeli defense and dual-use products. Framed in the incendiary language of “stopping genocide,” the law was hailed by the government’s far-left flank as a historic moral stand against Israel.

Yet, as the INN report emphasized, the same government that championed this legislation has now carved out a bespoke loophole for Airbus. The exemption, approved in a cabinet meeting last week, allows the aerospace giant to continue manufacturing aircraft and drones at Spanish facilities even when those platforms incorporate Israeli technology.

Written minutes of the meeting, cited by Reuters, state bluntly that the decision is rooted in Airbus’s “great industrial and export potential” and its importance in “preserving thousands of highly skilled jobs in Spain.” Airbus employs roughly 14,000 people across the country and accounts for approximately 60 percent of Spain’s air and defense exports—figures that no government, no matter how ideologically fervent, can cavalierly discard.

The exemption has immediately exposed fissures within Spain’s already fragile governing coalition. Sumar, whose base is deeply hostile to Israel and sympathetic to pro-Palestinian activism, is reportedly seething at what it sees as a betrayal of the coalition’s moral commitments. As the INN report noted, the move risks igniting a fresh round of internal discord, particularly as it coincides with Madrid’s increasingly confrontational posture toward Jerusalem.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has made Spain one of the most vociferous European critics of Israel. In November 2023, he was summoned by Israel’s Foreign Ministry after accusing the Jewish state of “indiscriminate killings” and violations of international law. By April 2024, Sánchez was publicly castigating Israel’s “disproportionate response” in Gaza, warning that it threatened to destabilize not only the Middle East but “the entire world.” And in May, Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares went further still, calling for international sanctions against Israel.

Yet, as the Israel National News report observed, these denunciations ring hollow when set against the reality that Spain’s most lucrative aerospace exporter is being quietly shielded from the very sanctions Madrid claims to champion.

The cabinet minutes reveal another telling detail: Airbus is now working with Spain’s Ministry of Defense on a “plan to disconnect from Israeli technology.” No timeline, no milestones, no specifics—just a vague promise that, at some indeterminate point in the future, Spanish industry will wean itself off Israeli innovation.

For now, however, Spain is effectively conceding what Israel and its defenders have long argued: Israeli technology is too deeply embedded in advanced aerospace systems to be excised without catastrophic economic consequences. The INN report emphasized that Israeli components and know-how—particularly in avionics, sensors, cyber-defense and drone systems—are not easily substituted, even by a conglomerate as sophisticated as Airbus.

In other words, Spain is discovering the hard way that the global defense ecosystem is not modular. It is interdependent, and Israeli technology is a critical node.

The Airbus exemption did not occur in a vacuum. On the same day Reuters reported the cabinet’s decision, Spain’s consumer ministry ordered seven tourist accommodation websites to remove 138 listings for holiday homes located in what it terms “occupied Palestinian territories.” As Israel National News reported, the ministry threatened sanctions if the sites failed to comply, framing the move as part of its broader effort to enforce the September embargo law.

The juxtaposition is striking: on the one hand, Spain is aggressively policing the online advertising of Israeli-linked properties; on the other, it is bending its own embargo to protect its industrial champions. To critics in Israel, and to many in Europe, this looks less like principled foreign policy and more like selective morality.

Tensions between Madrid and Jerusalem have been simmering for months, and the Airbus episode is unlikely to cool them. Israeli officials privately told INN that the exemption validates their suspicion that Spain’s rhetoric is designed more for domestic political consumption than for genuine economic rupture.

Israel, they argue, is being singled out for symbolic punishment while Spain quietly insulates itself from the real costs of confrontation. As one senior Israeli diplomat put it to INN, “They want to boycott Israel, but not at the expense of Spanish jobs.”

Spain is not alone in this predicament. Across Europe, governments are grappling with how to reconcile pro-Palestinian sentiment at home with the practical realities of defense procurement and industrial supply chains. Israeli technology is woven into everything from missile defense systems to commercial aviation, and decoupling from it is far more complicated than passing a parliamentary resolution.

The Spanish case is simply the most naked illustration yet of this contradiction. As the Israel National News report observed, the Airbus exemption is not a policy anomaly—it is a policy confession.

Within Spain, the political fallout is only beginning. Sumar leaders have demanded transparency about the scope of the exemption and the nature of the Israeli technologies involved. They argue that the decision undermines the September law and erodes Spain’s moral standing.

The Socialists counter that without Airbus, Spain’s economy would suffer irreparable harm. The cabinet minutes, again cited by INN, speak of “thousands of highly skilled jobs” at stake—engineers, technicians, designers whose livelihoods are tethered to global supply chains that do not bend easily to ideological pressure.

In the end, the Airbus exemption lays bare the limits of performative diplomacy. Spain can summon ambassadors, issue condemnations and instruct travel websites to delist Israeli properties. But when its industrial backbone is on the line, it blinks.

For Israel, the episode is a bittersweet vindication. On one hand, it underscores the depth of hostility emanating from Madrid. On the other, it affirms the enduring indispensability of Israeli innovation—even to those governments most eager to denounce it.

As Israel National News reported, Spain’s policy now stands as a study in contradiction: a government that proclaims a moral embargo on Israel while simultaneously carving out exceptions to protect its own economic interests.

At 30,000 feet, aboard an Airbus aircraft manufactured in Spain, that contradiction is not merely philosophical. It is built into the machine itself.