A Spanish newspaper's move to mark the second world war anniversary with an interview with the Holocaust-denying historian David Irving has touched off a furious row with Israel, which has condemned the decision to elevate freedom of expression above ethics.

El Mundo yesterday defended its decision to publish the Irving interview, saying he was one of a series of interviewees picked because of their opinions on polemical questions left behind by the war. It said it also chose Irving, who served 13 months in an Austrian jail for denying that the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews, because he was at the centre of a wider debate about the criminalisation of opinion.

Israel's ambassador to Spain, Raphael Schutz, complained bitterly about El Mundo's decision to include Irving in a run of interviews that include the Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw and the director of the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Israel, Avner Shalev.

"The problem is not just …