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Alan Grabinsky

Writer and journalist based in Barcelona covering culture and Jewish life for international outlets. More than 100 articles published in The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, and many more (selection below). I'm passionate about diasporic identity, books, public spaces, archives, and literature. I've given talks about these and other issues in Mexico, Spain, Israel, England, Colombia, and the United States.  I´m also a coordinator of Barcelona's Jewish Book Fair, Sefer and artist-fellow at LABA Barcelona.   

Escritor, periodista y ensayista con más de cien artículos publicados en medios como Nexos, Letras Libres, The Guardian y The Wall Street Journal, entre otros. Autor del libro Espejismos (Editorial de la Noche, 2022). Fue becario del programa Jóvenes Creadores del Fondo de Cultura y las Artes (FONCA) para desarrollar un libro de ensayos sobre viajes. Estudió una Licenciatura en Filosofía por la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), y una Maestría en Medios, Cultura y Comunicación por la Universidad de Nueva York (NYU). Es un apasionado del urbanismo, las migraciones, la identidad judía y la literatura. Soy coordinador de Sefer, el festival del libro judío de Barcelona y becario de LABA Barcelona. 

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Espejismos

Espejismos es una colección de crónicas de viajes a Estambul y la India, con etapas en Nueva York, Israel y la Ciudad de México. Es también un ensayo sobre cómo se ha transformado nuestra relación con el Otro —debido a cambios tecnológicos, geográficos, políticos y culturales— con base en ocho años de viajes, lecturas y experiencias personales. Una cartografía propia cuyos elementos se vinculan unos con otros como en un fractal.
Los seres humanos nunca dejamos de ser nómadas: en las ciudades globalizadas se ejercita, día a día, la habilidad de sobrevivir en terreno ajeno.

¡Compra ya!

Featured Articles

Explore a featured selection of my writing work below.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency •

Latin Jews seek belonging in communities where they don’t feel welcome - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Ziggy Valdez, a nonbinary Mexican Jew studying to become a rabbi, was born in Illinois and grew up moving around the country as the child of a Navy father, always attached to a Reform synagogue.


Valdez, who uses they/them pronouns, has Mexican roots on both sides of the family and has been “physically brown since birth,” but latinidad and Chicano identity weren’t an active part of family life. Their father worked in the Navy, which according to Valdez’ was the biggest barrier between them an...
The Forward •

Slovenia’s last Jewish institution endures through desecration and decay

On a Saturday morning last July, Robert Baruh Waltl watched two processions converge on central Ljubljana. From one direction, near the river, came a column of neo-Nazis chanting nationalist slogans chanting “Long live Slovenia.” From the other came pro-Palestinian marchers singing “from the river to the sea”.

The city, he notes drily, is very small. “You could see both demonstrations at the same time,” he told me over a video call from his office. “Far right from one side, far left from the ot...
Tablet Magazine •

Spain's Jewish Question - Tablet Magazine

On March 10, 2026, Spain’s Council of Ministers officially terminated the appointment of its ambassador to Israel, Ana María Salomón Pérez, formalizing a diplomatic standoff that had been building for months. Pérez had first been recalled for consultations on Sep. 9, 2025, hours after Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar accused the Sánchez government of antisemitism, and had never returned. The permanent recall is the culmination of a steady deterioration since Oct. 7, 2023, during which Sánche...
Letras Libres •

Identidades híbridas en la literatura judía | Letras Libres

Hay algo obstinado en intentar escribir literatura judía desde Europa. Aquí muchas, si no la mayoría, de las organizaciones judías son fantasmales, buscan la preservación de un patrimonio que ha caído en desuso porque sus usuarios fueron asesinados.


Escribir literatura judía desde Europa y en español representa una complicación mayor, pues hasta hace unas cuantas décadas, el único país del continente en el que se habla esa lengua se encontraba, en las palabras de Alejandro Baer, Judenfrei. La...
Letras Libres •

“La negación del antisemitismo es uno de sus rasgos más extendidos hoy”. Entrevista a Alejandro Baer | Letras Libres

Para el sociólogo Alejandro Baer, el antisemitismo es “un ángulo ciego en la sociología española”. En su libro recién publicado Antisemitismo: El eterno retorno de la cuestión judía (Catarata, 2025), Baer recorre la historia y el presente de este prejuicio en España que, si bien se ha visto inflamado en meses recientes por el recrudecimiento del conflicto Israel/Palestina, dista de ser nuevo, y ha sido alimentado desde distintas épocas y signos políticos.


Baer es investigador en el Instituto...
The Forward •

Meet Angelina Muñiz Huberman, a Mexican writer whose novels explore Sephardic history and crypto-Judaism

MEXICO CITY (JTA) — When Angelina Muñiz Huberman was six years old, her mother shut the main door of their apartment in Mexico City and, whispering as if under persecution, told her that she descended from Jews.

“She told me that if I ever needed to get recognized by other fellow Jews,” Huberman said, “I should make the sign of the Kohanim” — a hand gesture representing an ancient priestly blessing, made famous in a different context by a certain “Star Trek” character.

That moment sparked a ke
Jewish Telegraphic Agency •

Chile’s Jews feel under ‘siege’ from anti-Israel sentiment, so they’re backing a far-right presidential candidate

(JTA) — Sunday’s presidential primaries in Chile narrowed the race down to two polar opposite candidates: a Catholic far-right leader with nine children who has defended the iron-fisted rule of Augusto Pinochet, and a 35-year-old leftist leader who represents a years-long protest movement calling for a new Chilean constitution.

For many Chilean Jews, the choice is clear, if wildly divergent from the way Jews vote in the United States: Most are backing the right-wing candidate, José Antonio Kast
Jewish Telegraphic Agency •

These Jewish activists work as translators for migrants to fight 'language violence'

(JTA) — In 2018, a caravan of Central American migrants approached the United States through Mexico, stoking both fears and compassion.

Ariel Koren, an interpreter who was translating for separated families near the U.S.-Mexico border at the time, saw a bureaucracy intent on discouraging immigration by making the process nearly impossible for non-English speakers. She called it “language violence.”

The 25-year-old, who was living in Mexico City, had taken time away from her job working for Goo
Jewish Review of Books •

Forging an Identity

In a 1949 letter to an old family acquaintance in Istanbul, a man called Mauricio Fresco described his latest book project, a work titled Forge Your Own Passport, in which he sought to “prove the stupidity of passports, visas, nationalities, races, etc.” It was an odd project, particularly for a man who had spent eighteen years in the Mexican diplomatic corps, stationed in places as far afield as Shanghai, Bordeaux, Lisbon, and Nazi-occupied Paris. But it was precisely these experiences advocati
Jewish Review of Books •

Forging an Identity

In a 1949 letter to an old family acquaintance in Istanbul, a man called Mauricio Fresco described his latest book project, a work titled Forge Your Own Passport, in which he sought to “prove the stupidity of passports, visas, nationalities, races, etc.” It was an odd project, particularly for a man who had spent eighteen years in the Mexican diplomatic corps, stationed in places as far afield as Shanghai, Bordeaux, Lisbon, and Nazi-occupied Paris. But it was precisely these experiences advocati
Atlantic Council •

City Resilience Snapshot: Ciudad de México

Ubicada en una cuenca de un lago y rodeada por volcanes, la Ciudad de México está en riesgo constante de terremotos, inundaciones, olas de calor y otros desastres naturales. Más de la mitad de los trabajadores de la megalópolis viven al día y no tienen una red social de apoyo, lo cual los hace particularmente vulnerable a este tipo de choques. El manejo de la crisis del COVID-19 por parte del Gobierno de la Ciudad de México, en abril, 2020, podría ser un modelo en la construcción de resiliencia enfocado en este sector. En un acto sin precedentes, los mercados públicos, la sociedad civil, sindicatos y el gobierno de la ciudad juntaron esfuerzos para implementar el Programa de Apoyo a Personas No Asalariadas, con el objetivo de brindar de ayudar a que los trabajadores informales sobrevivan el confinamiento.
Atlantic Council •

City Resilience Snapshot: Mexico City

Located on a lake basin and surrounded by volcanoes, Mexico City is continuously at risk of earthquakes, floods, heat waves, and other natural—and not so natural—disasters. More than half of the megalopolis’s workforce survives day-to-day and without a social safety net, which makes them particularly vulnerable to these shocks. The handling of the COVID-19 pandemic could serve as a template for how to help these communities become more resilient to crises. In an unprecedented act, public market
The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com •

United by the Deportivo, Mexico's Jews were separated by coronavirus

It houses, among other things, a full-size Olympic swimming pool, another 25-meter covered pool, dozens of tennis courts, multiple basketball courts, fronton courts (for playing Basque pelota sports), other paddle courts, a 200-person theater, two full-sized soccer fields, a baseball field, men and women’s saunas, a Yiddish and Hebrew library, a hair salon and a restaurant.

On a recent visit, the normally filled premises were eerily quiet. The restaurant — in pre-COVID times packed with childre
WSJ •

Mexico City, Struggling to Provide Clean Water, Tests a New Method

When Carmen Luna moved to a neighborhood on the outskirts of Mexico City in 1975, there was no sewage system. To get water, she carried buckets to and from a faucet in the street. At the end of the 1980s, her house was connected to the grid; her family would get tamarind-colored water three days a week.

Last year, Ms. Luna signed up for a new rainwater-harvesting program led by Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, an environmental scientist. The city government had teamed up with local nonprofi
Julius Baer •

FARO: Cultural lighthouses brighten up Mexico City's art scene

That same year, the FARO in Milpa Alta, an area where suicide is the third most common cause of death for adults between 19 and 30, also opened its doors. Because of its confined space—originally 600 square metres— this project innovated by developing a “FARO outside of FARO” program, with the workshops taking place in smaller venues closer to people’s homes.

Currently, there are 6 different FAROS across the city, with two more due to open this year; one of them, FARO la Perulera, is inside a b
Jewish Telegraphic Agency •

He wanted to encapsulate Beijing's Jewish community in a Passover Haggadah. The coronavirus complicated that.

(JTA) — Unlike Shanghai or Hong Kong, which received Jews fleeing from World War II, Beijing does not have a robust Jewish history.

In the words of Joshua Kurtzig, former president of the Reform congregation there, the massive Chinese capital is a “very transient city,” especially for Jews — meaning that many pass through without putting down generations of roots.

Some 1,000 Jews now live in Beijing among its 20 million residents, and the congregation, Kehillat Beijing, has no permanent clergy
Julius Baer •

Running out of water in a liquid paradise

Mexico City’s problems with running water are acute: in the city’s poorest neighbourhoods such as Iztapalapa and Xochimilco, brown, murky water flows from the faucets just once a week, if at all.

The irony is that water in this region abounds. Located in a valley 2250 metres above sea level, the Aztec city of Tenochtitlán – the precursor to today’s Mexico City – was once connected by a system of lakes and rivers. The Spaniards drained the basin to make way for their colonial city, and four cent
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