The Spanish National Court, Audiencia Nacional, issued an unprecedented ruling ordering the Spanish government to award Israel’s Ariel University a compensation package of 70,000 EUR following a 10-year-long legal dispute.

The university had filed a lawsuit against a Spanish Housing Ministry decision to expel the university from the Solar Decathlon Europe competition on political grounds. The Spanish National Court said that Ariel’s exclusion from the competition was “illegal, null, and void.”