Andorra: A Carnival Updates Ancient Hatreds
Few people know that Andorra is a tiny, independent principality situated between France and Spain in the Pyrenees. During this year’s Carnival, on the eve of Lent, a figure dressed in Israel’s blue and white and marked with a Star of David was put on a mock trial, shot, and burned. Organizers insist it was satire—a commentary on the Gaza war and criticism of Israel’s government. History suggests that when Jewish symbols are dragged into Carnival rituals of humiliation and fire, something much older is being revived.
The events in Andorra did not occur in a vacuum.
Across Europe, Carnival has long been a season of inversion—a few days when authority is mocked and taboos loosened before the sobriety of Lent. For centuries, though, Jews were not merely spectators of this inversion; they were often its targets.
In 15th-century Rome under Pope Paul II, Jews were forced to race through the streets as part of Carnival festivities. They were required to wear distinctive clothing and were subjected to public mockery. Later, rabbis and community leaders were compelled to march in humiliating processions before jeering crowds. Across parts of Italy, Carnival became a time when Jews were singled out for ridicule, taxed for the privilege of their own humiliation, and debased for the amusement of the Christian majority.
These were not harmless games. They were ritualized reminders of who stood outside the circle of belonging.
This pattern did not end in the Middle Ages. In recent years, Carnivals in Belgium and Spain have featured grotesque caricatures of Jews clutching bags of money, performers wearing fake hooked noses, and Holocaust-themed floats that trivialized the murder of 6 million Jews. Organizers often protest that Carnival is a space for “no-holds-barred satire.” But satire that repeatedly reaches for Jewish imagery—greed, conspiracy, death—signals something beyond comedy: a provocation reminding everyone that Jews remain an outsider, worthy of ridicule.
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Andorra’s spectacle fits that lineage of Carnival Jew-hatred.
This moment is especially troubling because it fuses ancient tropes with contemporary, internet-driven demonization of the Jewish state. We are living through an era in which Israel is accused of genocide, of deliberately targeting children, of engineering famine—charges amplified across social media and framed as though the Jewish state uniquely targets Palestinian civilians, and as though Hamas’ mass murder did not exist. The blood libel—the medieval accusation that bloodthirsty Jews delight in the suffering of innocents—has found a contemporary vocabulary.
When a Carnival effigy bearing the Jewish state’s colors is “condemned,” shot, and burned, it is not an isolated local prank. It is the marriage of medieval imagery and modern demonization.
Today, everything local is global. A spectacle in a small Pyrenean principality can be transmitted across continents in minutes. What once might have been dismissed as provincial theatrics now becomes part of a transnational ecosystem of images that normalize hostility toward Jews, Judaism, and the Jewish state.
For that reason, this incident deserves global denunciation—more than the fury of a tiny Jewish community, and more than the meaningless words of Andorran officials.
Carnival season unfolds close to Lent, one of Christianity’s holiest periods—a time historically burdened with accusations against Jews. The Catholic Church and other Christian communities have, especially since the Second Vatican Council, taken significant steps to repudiate antisemitism and theologies of contempt. Those words matter. But we have seen repeatedly that words are not self-executing.
Right now, what is needed is clear denunciation—not only from political leaders but from faith leaders, media voices, and cultural influencers across Europe. When Jewish symbols are placed on the pyre, silence is not neutrality.
We have enough crises in 2026. We do not need to resurrect medieval libels during a sacred season. We do not need to blur the line between legitimate political debate and collective demonization.
Criticism of Israel’s policies is fair game in any democracy. Staging the symbolic execution of imagery inseparable from Jewish identity crosses a boundary. It sends a message that Jew-hatred may once again be openly celebrated.
Antisemitism in Europe was never—not even after Auschwitz—truly dead; it was, at times, restrained by memory. But what happens when the wrong memories prevail?
Jews in Europe and around the world can only hope and pray that good neighbors will find a collective voice denouncing antisemitism—a voice so often absent in European history. Without that intervention, the resilience of history’s oldest hate could once again prevail.
