A man who had been appointed Saturday to be Madrid’s “Cultural Counselor” and a new city councilman has resigned as counselor over anti-Semitic jokes and comments made on twitter in 2011.

Guillermo Zapata tweeted in 2011 “How do you fit five million Jews in a SEAT 600 [a Spanish car]?  In the ashtray.”

Zapata claimed it was all humor and not how he feels about Jews.

“Now some of those tweets, which were written within the context of a conversation on black humor, have been recovered with the goal of presenting them as though they represented my ideas….while in fact I do not defend them at all,” Zapata wrote Sunday.  “I firmly condemn all forms of racism, and, of course, anti-Semitism. I believe the Jewish Holocaust teaches us a lesson that humanity must never forget, so that it is never repeated.”

However, critics of Zapata quickly pointed out how he defended a now-disgraced journalist who denied the Holocaust.

Jews in Spain were quick to issue condemnation for the statements.

“The Jewish community of Madrid has issued an immediate communique asking for explanations and obviously denouncing these types of comments and we also stated that we will not tolerate any kind of anti-Semitism,” said David Hatchwell, the president of the Jewish community of Madrid and vice president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain.