Antisemitic graffiti at the Jewish cemetery in Hoyo de Manzanares, near Madrid. Photo: Twitter.

Spain’s leading anti-racist organization has urged the hate crimes prosecutor in Madrid to charge the perpetrators of the antisemitic vandalism of a Jewish cemetery near the Spanish capital with a crime against fundamental rights, which carries a sentence of up to four years in prison.

Graffiti declaring “good Jew dead Jew” and “murdering Jews we will hang you” were spray-painted on Wednesday night at the entrance to the small Jewish section at the cemetery in Hoyo de Manzanares, a northern suburb of Madrid. The gate was daubed with the word “Raus” — German for “out” — and a crossed out Star of David.

The culprits for the outrage have not yet been identified.

On Thursday, Esteban Ibarra — president of the Movement Against Intolerance, a Spanish anti-racist group — filed a complaint with the Madrid Public Prosecutor’s Office in which he called for stepped-up efforts to apprehend the vandals. Ibarra argued that the vandals had committed a crime against fundamental rights, which is punishable under the Spanish criminal code with up to four years in prison.

Ibarra also expressed concern that the vandalism could have been carried out by a “clandestine neo-Nazi organization.” He emphasized that the authorities should view the crime — which took place in the same week that a synagogue in Bulgaria and a Jewish monument in the German city of Halle were targeted by antisemitic vandals — within the context of growing antisemitism in Europe.

In a separate statement, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE) — the institution that officially represents Spanish Jews — “strongly condemned” the graffiti and urged the authorities to “pursue and convict the perpetrators.”