Just over a month remains until the Community of Madrid hosts a Climbing World Cup for the second time in its history, featuring two disciplines: bouldering and speed. But the milestone could be overshadowed by the participation of the Israeli national team in the competition, which will take place in Alcobendas: more than 120 organizations and sports collectives from all over Spain have united to demand a veto on that country’s participation in the event because they understand it is another attempt to “whitewash” through sport the genocide committed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government against the population of Palestine. The associations have already tried “by all means” to reach an understanding with the parties involved in the organization of the event, both national and international, but they do not rule out that Madrid may soon experience something similar to the boycott of the final stage of La Vuelta in 2025.
Climbers for Palestine Spain and the Platform for the Sports Boycott of Israel launched a campaign on April 10 to prevent the eight Israeli athletes from participating in the competition, which will be held from May 28 to 31. Over two weeks, new organizations have joined, from small sports clubs and neighborhood and student associations like the University Network for Palestine; through sports groups like Bulder Queen, Girls on the Wall, Monkey Fingers, and Rock and Rocks Pedriza; to the Tenants’ Union, Más Madrid, Marea Palestina, Ecologistas en Acción, CGT, Asambleas 8M, and the Hispano-Palestinian Association Jerusalem. “Some people don’t want to link sport with politics, but it is linked, especially for Israel. Sport cannot be used in a utilitarian way,” says Lidón Soriano, spokesperson for the Platform. “We must de-normalize Israel. It’s not normal that sanctions have not yet been applied to it in sport,” she adds.
What they argue is that the Israel Climbing Federation (ILCA) promotes and publicizes the occupation of Palestinian territories, according to data published on the Climbers for Palestine website. The organization states that Israel has occupied at least seven climbing areas, six of them in the West Bank and one in the Syrian territory of the Golan Heights. “The main climbing sectors in Palestine are under illegal Israeli military occupation, which prevents Palestinian climbers — including those who originally opened these routes — from accessing them,” they assert in a statement.
They add that the ILCA, which EL PAÍS has unsuccessfully tried to contact, “illegally appropriates” these climbing routes and has even “plagiarized” the Palestine Climbing Guide, launched in 2019 by athletes from that nation, “to publish their own Israeli guides, erasing any reference to their original authors.” They also denounce that Israeli sports tourism agencies “market these spaces” as their own destinations.
With these arguments, Climbers for Palestine Spain and the Platform for the Sports Boycott of Israel believe that the participation of that country would contribute to “normalizing illegal occupation and apartheid”; something that is already happening in international competitions, such as the World Cup, whose calendar stops around this time in the Chinese city of Sanya. The competition, internationally known as the World Climbing Series, is an annual circuit of international events organized by the International Federation of Sport Climbing, consisting of a series of events held worldwide throughout the season, where athletes accumulate points based on their performance in each event.
The Alcobendas event will host one of the six world bouldering competitions of the year (climbing on low artificial walls) and one of the seven speed stops (ascending a 15-meter wall in the shortest possible time). The registration phase for competitors for this tournament has already opened, and what the organizations want to achieve is that those from Israel cannot do so.
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This does not mean that athletes from that country will not participate. “There are already athletes registered as neutrals, for example, Russians,” explains Jimena Villar de Onis, spokesperson for Climbers for Palestine Spain, referring to the veto on Russia by several international sports bodies since the invasion of Ukraine began in 2022. The International Federation of Sport Climbing, according to Villar de Onis, investigates these “neutral” athletes to verify that they have no connection to the war or the army before allowing them to participate in their events. “That’s what we’re asking for,” says Villar de Onis regarding the case of Israeli climbers.
Villar de Onis assures that they have already tried to reach an understanding with World Climbing. She explains that the Spanish Federation of Mountain Sports and Climbing (FEDME) sent a petition to the highest international body so that at its general assembly in 2026, which was to be held this April 23 in Saudi Arabia, the issue of the veto on Israel in competitions would be addressed. World Climbing — which, in fact, kept the date but was forced to reschedule the assembly from in-person to virtual due to the US and Israel’s war against Iran — said that, for logistical reasons, it was not possible to address such a delicate issue in an online meeting. This newspaper has tried to contact FEDME to ascertain its position and whether it will prohibit Israel’s participation in Alcobendas, but has also not received a response.
The more than 120 associations adhering to the petition demand that sport “not be an instrument for whitewashing a government whose occupation was declared illegal by the International Court of Justice in July 2024” and demand accountability from other bodies such as the Alcobendas City Council and the Community of Madrid as sponsors of the event, Prensa Ibérica as organizer, and the Higher Sports Council (CSD) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs “as managers and ultimate decision-makers in the sports field in the Spanish State.”
Having received no answers, they see a way out in a boycott. They assure that the experience of the last stage of La Vuelta, in mid-September 2025, demonstrated “the effectiveness” of popular pressure: thousands of demonstrators blocked the streets of Madrid to protest against Israel’s participation in the cycling race, which forced the race to be suspended. The organizations and collectives do not rule out taking the most drastic measures, such as a boycott, a “non-violent way” of protesting. La Vuelta, in any case, had an extraordinary capacity as a loudspeaker or catalyst for protests, being one of the major cycling competitions in Europe and the world, as well as being held outdoors, which facilitated protest action, and being televised by international channels; in short, an exceptional showcase that acted as a call to action in different cities of Spain.
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