New issue out soon. Get a discounted subscription to our print magazine today.

Spanish Cycling Protests Reject Israeli Sportswashing

By
David Timothy

The Vuelta a España, Spain’s premier cycling stage race, saw the participation of team Israel–Premier Tech, organized to promote Israel’s reputation. Thousands of protesters disrupted the race on Saturday to decry the team’s sportswashing of genocide.

In Spain, protests at Vuelta a España against the genocide in Gaza and the presence of the Israel-Premier Tech team at the race disrupted its final stage. (Pierre-Philippe Marcou / AFP via Getty Images)

On Saturday, the Vuelta a España, Spain’s premier cycling stage race and its equivalent to the Tour de France, was scheduled to end its three-week Grand Tour schedule in a largely ceremonial sprint stage in downtown Madrid. But thousands of pro-Palestine protesters, present at stages throughout the race, massed near the finish circuit, overwhelming the crowd control and dragging metal barriers onto the course.

The stage was called off soon after with no winner, the overall prizes already determined and locked in. These protest actions were a statement by the Spanish public against the participation in the race of team Israel–Premier Tech, a team specifically named and organized to “sportswash” Israel, a country currently perpetuating an ongoing genocide responsible for the deaths of more than 64,000 Palestinians, a majority of them children.

The scenes on the circuit in Madrid were striking as hundreds of protesters filled the race course, facing up to riot police, waving Palestinian flags, lighting flares, and strewing race infrastructure behind them onto the course. Protesters chanted “No pasarán,” literally forbidding passage of Israel-Premier Tech cyclists, echoing the famous anti-fascist slogan used in the Spanish civil war by left-wing forces fighting against fascist dictator Francisco Franco.

Following the stage’s cancellation, Socialist Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez decried the “barbarism” perpetrated by Israel and voiced his support for the protests, saying “Israel cannot use international events to whitewash its presence.” He added, “Today Spain shines as an example and as a source of pride. It’s [giving] an example to the international community by taking a step forward in defense of human rights.”

Some individual protesters decided to place themselves in the way of riders over the course of the race — a very dangerous maneuver, as riders often achieve racing velocities of over 30 miles per hour while clad only in Lycra. But some riders understand the desperation that causes this.

Jonas Vingegaard, winner of the 2025 Vuelta and the 2022 and 2023 Tours de France, and one of the most famous and visible cyclists in the world, explained, “I think they think that it doesn’t get attention enough, and they’re really desperate, and that’s why they do it. . . . It’s horrible what’s currently happening, and I just think that those who are [protesting] want a voice.” While riders have been understandably concerned about their safety due to these individual actions, it has been the mass actions that have had the most impact, ultimately culminating in Madrid.

Sportswashing Genocide

Palestinian flags have been staples at recent Vueltas and many cycling races, but it was in this Vuelta that these protests gained a critical mass and so were able to disrupt the race and make a larger statement. These protests are not simply about the genocide in Gaza but specifically about the presence in the race of second-division ProTeam Israel-Premier Tech, due to be promoted next year to the top-tier World Tour circuit.

Israel–Premier Tech is not owned or financed by Israel itself — a fact used by critics of the protests to dismiss them as unreasonable — but privately owned by Canadian-Israeli billionaire Sylvan Adams. Adams is a personal friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, who has joined Adams’s team on promotional events and has recently tweeted support of Israel–Premier Tech remaining in the race despite the outcry: “Great job to Sylvan and Israel’s cycling team for not giving in to hate and intimidation. You make Israel proud!”

Adams has called himself the “self-appointed Ambassador-at-Large for Israel,” dedicating his life, in his words, to correcting misunderstandings about the country created by the media. He has called his cycling team’s work “the antidote to BDS [the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement].” Adams is not only involved in sportswashing Israel’s international reputation but has also personally donated large sums of money to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), saying of the occupation and genocide, “Our IDF has gone in there and done what they have to do, I hope they are permitted and allowed to finish the job.”

Riders and staff are aware of the political implications of the team’s presence. “By displaying the Israel logo in a race, we’re advertising or getting involved in the conflict in a certain way, because we’re not neutral,” says Hugo Houle, a rider for the team, which aligns with Adams’s vision: “Our athletes understand that being on an Israeli team, they are each ambassadors for the team’s home country.” In professional cycling, teams primarily obtain funding from sponsoring organizations, not ticket sales, and the sponsors expect them and their riders to act as moving billboards for those organizations. The protests were specifically opposed to Israel being put on billboards on public roads.

In an interview with BikeRadar, Lidón Soriano, organizer with BDS Deportivo in Spain, explicitly identifies the shared objective of the various movements involved in the protests as removing Israel from sports competition and expelling it from La Vuelta, with their work continuing “until governments and sports organisations fulfill their legal obligation to do everything possible to end the occupation, apartheid, and genocide in Palestine.” Removal of the team from the race has been a clear call to action by protesters since the beginning.

Righteous Disruption

Many cyclists, commentators, and fans have railed against the protest and the protesters, angry to see races cut short and the competition at the highest level of the sport reduced in scope. Criticism of the protests has intensified after the abandonment of the Madrid stage. Michał Kwiatkowski, a rider in the race for INEOS Grenadiers and notable to many as a former world champion and longtime member of the professional peloton, released an exasperated statement soon after the early conclusion of the stage:

If the UCI and the responsible bodies couldn’t make the right decisions early enough, then long-term it’s very bad for cycling that the protesters managed to get what they wanted. You can’t just pretend nothing is happening.

From now on, it’s clear for everyone that a cycling race can be used as an effective stage for protests and next time it will only get worse, because someone allowed it to happen and looked the other way.

These comments were echoed by other prominent individuals in the cycling world, including 2023 Tour de France Femmes winner Demi Vollering, but they ignore that cycling races, like the Vuelta and the Tour de France, have taken place on open, public roads for over a hundred years. Spectators are free to attend, with no tickets; attendees show up on the side of the road. The open, public nature of cycling racing makes the sport uniquely democratic but also open to disruption in ways not applicable in other sports that use closed, gated stadiums. Races are often subject to many kinds of disruptions; in this year’s Tour of Britain, the race was paused as cows were herded across the course.

Other protests, like those raising awareness for climate change in 2022 or by local farmers, have disrupted a day’s racing for political causes before. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza perpetrated by Israel has galvanized the Spanish public, already largely left-leaning and sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

While Barcelona is set to host the 2026 Tour de France’s Grand Départ, city council members have called for its cancellation if Israel–Premier Tech is not removed from the competition. Though some argue a “Pandora’s box” may be opened by the effectiveness of the protests, they ignore that this disruption is the direct result of the World Tour and the Vuelta playing host to a professional cycling team actively championing Israel — the country behind one of the most egregious genocides of the twenty-first century.