Will the Tour of Spanish cycling, which are halfway through, will he be able to continue normally? The eleventh stage – a loop around Bilbao – was neutralized this Wednesday, September 3, when dozens of pro -Palestinian demonstrators were massaged near the arrival. During a first passage of the peloton on the line, several of them tried to force the barriers in the last straight line, despite an important police device. Insufficient security conditions in the eyes of the organizers, who decided not to declare a stage winner, and to shorten the three-kilometer route so as not to have the city center of Bilbao rally to the peloton.
After setting off from Italy, the race joined Spain on August 27, and the political demands were expected to be heard in a country that officially recognized the Palestinian State last year. On that day, the runners must compete in a team time trial. And already, a handful of activists block the roads of the Israel Premier-Tech team, without causing a fall but delaying the teammates of the US leader Matthew Riccitelo.
The director of the Vuelta, Javier Guillen, had then announced that the organizers would file a complaint with the police, qualifying this demonstration as“Act of violence”. The Minister of Spanish Youth, Sira Rego, had judged “Absolutely unacceptable” to qualify as “Violent” a “Pacific protest” against a team supported by a state accused of “Systematic violence” In the Gaza Strip.
Since this first incident, not a day has happened without whole villages being adorned with Palestinian flags or signs arising the runners of the Israeli team. Tuesday, Simone Petili, of the Belgian team Intermarché-Wanty, fell when several demonstrators crossed the road when the peloton launched at high speed, forcing the runners to brake brutally. “I understand that the situation is not good but yesterday I fell because of a demonstration on the road. Please, we are just cycling runners who do our job and if it continues that our safety is no longer guaranteed. We feel in danger. We just want to run! Please”, insisted the interested party on social networks.
“While we respect the right to demonstrate peacefully, actions endangering athletes are unacceptable”, Judged, for his part, the president of the CPA runners’ union, Adam Hansen. Similar incidents had taken place last July during the Tour de France, where a pro-Palestinian activist disrupted the arrival of the stage in Toulouse, and the Tour of Italy in May. For the time being, no voice has publicly mentioned the possible withdrawal of the runners from the Israel Premier-Tech team from the Vuelta.
The Israel Premier-Tech team, previously Israel Start-up Nation, is the work of a Canado-Israeli of 66, years old, Sylvan Adams, whose business cards leave no doubt about his will: “Self -proclaimed ambassador for Israel”. The one who pedals each end of the round stage, before the runners and escorted by bikers of the gendarmerie, set up this structure in 2020, a team of the world’s first division which notably recruited the star on the decline Christopher Froome, quadruple yellow jersey of the Grande Boucle. The billionaire assumed to Libération in 2020 its ambition: to present the Hebrew state as a “Vibrant and robust democracy”, and “Normal, safe, open and tolerant country”, Contrary to treatment according to him “Not always balanced in the media”.
Sylvan Adams, invited to the inauguration of President Trump, was appointed in March President of the World Jewish Congress in Israel, a conglomerate of Jewish organizations. In an interview with the organization Themedialine in April 2024, he claimed that the war waged by Israel in Gaza was “The most human urban war in the history of conflicts”. To date, it has made more than 60,000 Palestinian victims, mainly civilians, according to data from the Ministry of Health of Hamas, deemed reliable by the UN.
