Around 20,000 people marched in Madrid Saturday in support of Palestinians, a day after the UN's top court said Israel must prevent genocidal acts in its war with Hamas.
Many of the marchers carried banners and placards denouncing the "genocide" in Gaza, which has been under relentless bombardment and siege since the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas.
Some carried Palestinian flags and shouted slogans denouncing Israel. Others had banners thanking South Africa for having brought the case against Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
In its ruling on Friday, the ICJ said Israel must prevent genocide in its war with Hamas and allow aid into Gaza, but stopped short of calling for an end to the fighting.
Spain, one of the most critical voices in Europe of Israel's offensive against Hamas, was one of those to welcome Friday's ruling
Israel recalled its top diplomat in Madrid in November after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez expressed doubts about the legality of Israel's war in Gaza. She returned in January.
Germans mark Holocaust Memorial Day
Also on Saturday, tens of thousands of Germans turned out across the country on Saturday to mark International Day, just days after a string of protests against right-wing extremists.
FILE - People walk with a banner reading "27th January 1945, day of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp" during a chain of lights on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, in district Pankow, Berlin, Germany January 27, 2024.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who earlier this month joined a march against the far right, on Saturday welcomed what he said were "millions of fellow citizens marching in the streets" of Germany.
"Never again," Scholz vowed Saturday as police in the western city of Duesseldorf said about 100,000 people joined the peaceful protest there.
Demonstrations were planned in 300 towns and villages across the country this weekend, according to the alliance "Together against the extreme right."
In the northern city of Kiel, police said 11,500 people had gathered before midday.
"Democracy is not for the timid", read placards alongside others saying, "Red card for the AfD" party of the extreme right.
'Never again is every day'
Scholz, who had turned out at a protest two weeks ago in Potsdam, close to the capital, said he was delighted to see people "stand up".
"Never again requires everybody's vigilance. Our democracy is not a gift from God, it is made by men," the chancellor said. "Never again is every day."
Defence Minister Boris Pistorius joined the protesters in his northwestern hometown of Osnabrueck, where he was born.
"There are three times as many demonstrations as last week, particularly in the east of Germany," said in a statement the citizen's alliance Campact, which is among the organisers of the protest movement.
It is in the east, formerly communist East Germany, where the AfD finds its biggest following.
Holocaust Day, commemorating the murder of six million Jews during World War Two, falls on the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945.
FILE - People light candles by the monument at the Birkenau Nazi death camp in Oswiecim, Poland, January 27, 2024. Survivors of Nazi death camps marked the 79th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp during World War II in a ceremony in southern Poland.
In Poland, site of the former camp, Auschwitz survivor Halina Birenbaum, aged 95, lamented anti-Jewish protests around the world and the "barbaric and long Russian attack against Ukraine... the barbaric terrorist attacks by Hamas and war on every side.
"For me it makes the Holocaust go on," she said.
In Germany, this year's 79th Holocaust anniversary came shortly after a report by investigative outlet Correctiv that revealed that AfD members had discussed the mass expulsion of immigrants and "non-assimilated citizens" at a November meeting with extremists.
The news sent shockwaves across Germany at a time when the AfD is soaring in opinion polls, just months ahead of three major regional elections in eastern Germany where their support is strongest.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser compared the extremist meeting on foreigners with the 1942 Wannsee conference when the Nazis plotted to exterminate European Jews.