Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez says his country has given an award to UN special rapporteur and global treasure Francesca Albanese.
Despite vile attacks from war criminals and genocide apologists, Albanese has stood firm in defence of international law. So Spain has honoured her commitment with its Order of Civil Merit, with Sánchez calling Francesca Albanese:
a voice that upholds the conscience of the world
La responsabilidad pública también implica la obligación moral de no mirar hacia otro lado.
Es un honor otorgar la Orden del Mérito Civil a una voz que sostiene la conciencia del mundo: @FranceskAlbs, Relatora Especial de la ONU en el territorio palestino ocupado. pic.twitter.com/6x9Yg99uel
— Pedro Sánchez (@sanchezcastejon) May 7, 2026
Since 2022, Albanese has held the role of United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967 (oPt). And this has meant shining a light on the intensifying crimes of the Israeli apartheid state since its genocidal assault on Gaza began in 2023.
Francesca Albanese hasn’t held back either. She hasn’t just sought accountability for Israel’s “settler-colonial genocide“. She has also highlighted the complicity of corporate giants with Israel’s crimes, tearing into the “engine of racial capitalism” that has enabled and propped up Israel’s transformation into an “economy of genocide”.
When mainstream media outlets have sought to cover for Israel, meanwhile, she has set them straight with wisdom and clarity.
Francesca Albanese praised
In a 3 May speech, Yanis Varoufakis praised Albanese, saying:
she has calculated the cost of speaking truth to power. And she has decided that that cost is infinitely less than the cost of silence.
This is why, he asserted:
She does not speak as a diplomat. Thank Goodness she doesn’t! Diplomats have given us the language of “there are arguments on both sides” and “restraint” and “proportionality.” Diplomatic language is the perfumed grave of moral clarity. No, she speaks as a jurist. As a human being. As a woman who has looked into the abyss and refused to call it a “complex geopolitical landscape”.
He added:
She stands before the world—alone, unarmed, armed only with law and language and a rare courage—and she says what the centrists will not say, what the foreign ministries will not say, what the editorial boards will not say. She says: “This is a genocide. And we are watching it happen.”
That’s why Israel’s backers and supporters:
have come for her. Smears. Investigations. Vicious editorials. Frozen bank accounts. Dispossession of the only apartment she had ever owned. The machinery of the respectable turned to crush her. Because the respectable cannot abide what she represents: a mirror held up to their complicity.
Albanese, he insisted:
threatens something very precious to the powerful: the right to commit atrocity without being named.
That’s why she deserves Spain’s award, and a thousand more. And that’s why she deserves our support and solidarity. She’s a powerful voice in the darkness, and we mustn’t allow genocide-supporters and genocide-deniers to silence that voice.
Featured image via MiddleEastEye
By Ed Sykes
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