Portugal’s Surf Riviera Confronts an Antisemitism That Never Fully Left

"From secret plots to poison Israelis to public chants of expelling Jews, antisemitism in Portugal is intensifying and metastasizing."

Portugal’s west coast has long been a favoured destination for travelling surfers eager to sample its prized surf, delicious sardines, cheap lodgings and welcoming locals. 

Each year, professional surfing’s governing body the World Surf League runs myriad events there, which includes a grand prix event at Peniche and ninety clicks south, a qualifying event at Cascais. 

A lesser known fact about Portugal is its determination to keep it free of the damn Jew.

A little history. 

In 1497, under pressure from Spain (Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the marriage of their daughter to Portugal’s King Manuel I conditioned on Portugal expelling its Jews), Manuel I ordered Jews to convert or leave. In practice he then blocked them from actually leaving and forcibly baptized most of the Jewish population, creating a class of “New Christians” (cristãos-novos).

The Portuguese Inquisition was established in 1536 and ran for nearly 300 years, targeting these New Christians for suspected secret Judaizing. Thousands were tried, tortured, and executed at autos-da-fé; Lisbon, Coimbra, and Évora had active tribunals.

The Lisbon Massacre of 1506 saw mobs kill an estimated 2,000-4,000 New Christians over several days, incited by friars claiming a miracle had been mocked by “heretics.” The Inquisition wasn’t formally abolished until 1821.

For a real brief period in the 21st century, Portugal appeared to be reckoning with that history. In 2015, the government began granting citizenship to descendants of the expelled Jews under a law of return modeled on similar Sephardic citizenship programs. But the initiative drew sustained criticism, much of it steeped in familiar antisemitic tropes about Jewish opportunism, and lawmakers reeled in the proram.,

Today, the rhetoric has curdled further.

The Combat Antisemitism Movement, an advocacy group that tracks hostility toward Jews worldwide, describes a marked escalation in Portugal.

“From secret plots to poison Israelis to public chants of expelling Jews, antisemitism in Portugal is intensifying and metastasizing,” the group wrote, pointing to a KAN News report on an alleged plot to poison Israelis with strychnine, as well as to antisemitic unrest in which Jews were blamed for rising housing costs.

And, so, here, let’s take a stroll through Cascais which, as surf fans know, is here Japanese pro surfer Kanoa Igarashi keeps a modest beachfront mansion. 

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But lest all Portuguese be tainted with the same Jew-hating brush, let us not forget the brave Aristides de Sousa Mendes who defied his master’s orders not to issue visas to Jews fleeing the Nazis, French, Ukranians, Hungarians, Poles and Russians.

As consul in Bordeaux in June 1940, with German forces advancing on France, he ignored Circular 14 and issued visas around the clock to refugees, a large share of them Jewish, fleeing the collapse.

The exact number is disputed. The commonly repeated figure of 30,000 comes from his family and is treated skeptically by historians; more careful estimates put it in the low thousands to low tens of thousands, with a meaningful share Jewish.

What’s not disputed is Salazar’s response: Sousa Mendes was recalled, subjected to a disciplinary tribunal, stripped of his position, and denied his pension. He died in poverty in 1954. Portugal did not officially rehabilitate him until 1988, when Yad Vashem had already recognized him as Righteous Among the Nations years earlier. That gap, decades of official silence followed by a very late honor, tells you where the regime actually stood.

Of course, Portugal ain’t alone in hating Jews.

Over the border in Spain, a “Destroy Israel” banner, crossed-out Israeli flag beside it, was unfurled at the San Fermín festival opening in Pamplona this July, the second straight year it’s appeared there, with crowds also tossing watermelon-shaped balls, a symbol adopted post-October 7.

🇪🇸Spain in 1492: Expelled, killed, or forcibly converted all Jews.

🇪🇸Spain during the Holocaust: Closely aligned with the Nazis.

🇪🇸Spain after the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust: Accuses Israel of genocide.

🇪🇸Spain last year: Refused to grant asylum to… pic.twitter.com/iEDZH3CLjT

— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) July 12, 2026

Israel’s Foreign Ministry responded: “Five hundred years after the Inquisition, calls for the destruction of the Jewish state in the streets of Spain.”

Days later, French Jewish tourists were chased through Barcelona by a mob shouting antisemitic abuse after leaving synagogue. Spain’s Interior Ministry logged an 86 percent rise in antisemitic hate crimes in 2025, 2,417 total hate incidents, the highest since records began in 2014.