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.

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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.”