This Oct. 6, 2026 by CAMERA Español’s Masha Gabriel appeared in The Jerusalem Post.
UN “expert” Francesca Albanese falsely claimed that Jews sent to the gas chambers in the Holocaust had been called “the Muslims” (Esquerda.net, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
In May, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez welcomed U.N. envoy Francesca Albanese to La Moncloa, the prime minister’s official residence, where he personally awarded her Spain’s Order of Civil Merit, citing “her extensive work documenting and denouncing violations of international law in Gaza.”
Just one day earlier, Sánchez had publicly defended Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory, against US sanctions and called on the European Commission to activate mechanisms to counter them.
The sanctions followed Albanese’s efforts to pressure the International Criminal Court to act against US and Israeli nationals.
That warm reception cannot be separated from the deferential treatment that a significant portion of the Spanish media has extended to Albanese. Long before Sánchez pinned a medal on her, state-owned outlets such as the EFE news agency and public broadcaster RTVE, along with private media such as El País, one of the most influential newspapers in the Spanish-speaking world, had already helped turn her into a familiar presence and a go-to voice on Israel and the Gaza Strip.
Read the rest of CAMERA’s Op-Ed at The Jerusalem Post.