Three artworks critical of Israeli policy are withdrawn and an artist faces a criminal complaint in Madrid
DATE
LOCATION
TARGETED PERSON/INSTITUTION
Artists Sebas Cabero, Nuria Güell and Byron Maher (graphic designer for the newspaper El Salto)
DOMAIN/FIELD
RESPONSIBLE FOR BAN
Complaint by ACOM (Acción y Comunicación sobre Oriente Medio) and the Movimiento contra la Intolerancia; Madrid Investigating Court No. 52
In November 2024, at the exhibition “Rabia mierda” at La Rosa, a self-managed social centre in Madrid, artists Sebas Cabero, Nuria Güell and Byron Maher showed three works denouncing the war in Gaza, the Israeli government’s policies and their media coverage: “¿La solución?”, “Contra-Propaganda” and “Estatados Israel”.
After a Telemadrid report described the exhibition as “antisemitic”, ACOM and the Movimiento contra la Intolerancia ran a social media campaign against it. An officer from the National Police’s Provincial Information Brigade then came to the venue to photograph the works. To protect the venue hosting them, the artists withdrew the works, keeping only the digital catalogue.
ACOM and the Movimiento contra la Intolerancia filed a complaint for a hate crime. In June 2025, Sebas Cabero was summoned as a suspect (investigado) before Madrid Investigating Court No. 52; the proceedings are ongoing. His defence denounces a strategy of judicial harassment that equates criticism of a state with antisemitism. The three works were shown again in the group exhibition “GENOCIDIO” at the Anselmo Lorenzo Foundation in Madrid, from December 2025 to January 2026.