Religion In Spain

While Roman Catholicism is still the largest religion in Spain, most Spaniards—and especially the younger—choose to ignore the Catholic teachings in morals, politics or sexuality, and do not attend Mass regularly.[8][9] Agnosticism and atheism enjoy social prestige, according to the general Western European secularization.[5][6][8][10][11] Culture wars are far more related to politics than religion, and the huge lack of popularity of typically religion-related issues like creationism prevent them from being used in such conflicts. Revivalist efforts by the Catholic Church and other creeds have not had any significant success out of their previous sphere of influence.[9][10] According to the Eurobarometer 69 (2008), only 3% of Spaniards consider religion as one of their three most important values, even lower than the 7% European average.[12] And according to the 2005 Eurobarometer Poll:[13]

59% of Spaniards responded that "they believe there is a God."

21% answered that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force".

19% answered that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force."

Evidence of the secular nature of contemporary Spain can be seen in the widespread support for the legalization of same-sex marriage in Spain — over 70% of Spaniards support gay marriage according to a 2004 study by the Centre for Sociological Research.[14] Indeed, in June 2005 a bill was passed by 187 votes to 147 to allow gay marriage, making Spain the third country in the European Union to allow same-sex couples to marry. This vote was split along conservative-liberal lines, with Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PP) and other left-leaning parties supporting the measure and People's Party (PP) against it. Proposed changes to the divorce laws to make the process quicker and to eliminate the need for a guilty party are also popular.

The Basharat Mosque in Pedro Abad, of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, was the first mosque to be built in modern Spain.

The recent waves of immigration, especially during and after the 1990s, have led to an increasing number of Muslims, who have about 1 million members. Nowadays, Islam is the second largest religion in Spain, after Roman Catholicism, accounting for approximately 2 percent of the total population. A study made by Unión de comunidades islámicas de España demonstrated that there were about 1,700,000 inhabitants of Muslim background living in Spain in 2012, accounting for 3-4% of the total population of Spain. The vast majority was composed of immigrants and descendants originating from Morocco and other African countries. More than 514,000 (30%) of them had Spanish nationality.[15]

Jews account for less than 1 percent of the population, mostly in Barcelona, Madrid and Murcia. Protestantism has also been boosted by immigration, but remains a small testimonial force among native Spaniards. Spain has been seen as a graveyard for foreign missionaries among Evangelical Protestants.[10] Protestant churches have about 1,200,000 members.[16]

Along with these waves of immigration, an important number of Latin American people, who are usually strong Catholic practitioners, have helped the Catholic Church to recover part of the attendance that regular Masses (Sunday Mass) used to have in the sixties and seventies and that was lost in the eighties among native Spaniards.

During the last decade, the involvement of the Catholic Church in politic affairs, through special groups such as Opus Dei, the Neocatechumenal Way or the Legion of Christ, especially personated through important politicians in the right-wing People's Party, has increased again. Old and new media, which are property of the Church, such as the COPE radio network, have also contributed to this new involvement in politics. The Church is no longer seen as a neutral and independent institution in political affairs and it is generally aligned with the opinion and politics of the People's Party. This implication has had, as a consequence, a renewed criticism from important sectors of the population (especially the majority of left-wing voters) against the Church and the way in which it is economically sustained by the State.

History[edit]

The 7th-century Visigothic church of San Pedro de la Nave

Royal Collegiate Church of Santa María la Mayor in Antequera, Andalusia

Spain, it has been observed, is a nation-state born out of religious struggle mainly between Catholicism and Islam, but also against Judaism (and, to a lesser extent, Protestantism).

Pre-Franco[edit]

Most of the Iberian Peninsula first accepted Christianity while still part of the Roman Empire. As Rome declined, Germanic tribes invaded most of the lands of the former empire. In the years following 410 the Visigoths - who had converted to Arian Christianity around 360 - occupied Spain. The Visigothic Kingdom established its capital in Toledo; its kingdom reached its high point during the reign of Leovigild (568-586). Visigothic rule led to a brief expansion of Arianism in Spain, however the native population remained staunchly Catholic.[citation needed] In 587 Reccared, the Visigothic king at Toledo, converted to Catholicism and launched a movement to unify doctrine. The Council of Lerida in 546 constrained the clergy and extended the power of law over them under the blessings of Rome.

In 711 an Arab raiding party led by Tariq ibn-Ziyad crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, then defeated the Visigothic king Roderic at the Battle of Guadalete. Tariq's commander, Musa bin Nusair then landed with substantial reinforcements, and by 718 the Muslims dominated most of the peninsula, establishing Islamic rule as a factor in the peninsula until 1492. During this period the number of Muslims increased greatly through the migration of Arabs and Berbers, and the conversion of Christians to Islam (known as Muladis or Muwalladun) with the latter forming the majority of the Islamic-ruled area by the end of the 10th century. Most Christians who remained adopted Arabic culture, and these Arabized Christians became known as Mozarabs. While under the status of dhimmis the Christian and Jewish subjects had to pay higher taxes than Muslims and could not hold positions of power over Muslims.

The Great Mosque of Córdoba turned church after the Reconquista.

The era of Muslim rule before 1055 is often considered a "Golden Age" for the Jews as Jewish intellectual and spiritual life flourished in Spain.[17] Only in the northern fringes of the peninsula did Christians remain under Christian rule. Here they established the great pilgrimage centre of Santiago de Compostela.

In the Middle Ages, Spain saw a slow Christian re-conquest of Muslim territories. In 1147, when the Almohads took control of Muslim Andalusian territories, they reversed the earlier tolerant attitude and treated Christians harshly. Faced with the choice of death, conversion, or emigration, many Jews and Christians emigrated.[18] Christianity provided the cultural and religious cement that helped bind together those who rose up against the Moors and sought to drive them out. Christianity and the Catholic Church helped shape the re-establishment of European rule over Iberia.

After centuries of the Reconquista, in which Christian Spaniards fought to drive out the Muslims, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile established the Spanish Inquisition in 1481 to complete the religious purification of the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim and Jewish thought and practice. In the centuries that followed, Spain saw itself as the bulwark of Catholicism and doctrinal purity. Spain carried Catholicism to the New World and to the Philippines, but the Spanish kings insisted on independence from papal "interference" - bishops in the Spanish domains were forbidden to report to the Pope except through the Spanish crown. In the 18th century Spanish rulers drew further from the papacy, banishing the Jesuits from their empire in 1767. The Spanish authorities abolished the Inquisition in the 1830s, but even after that, religious freedom was denied in practice, if not in theory.

Catholicism became the state religion in 1851, when the Spanish government signed a Concordat with the Holy See that committed Madrid to pay the salaries of the clergy and to subsidize other expenses of the Roman Catholic Church as a compensation for the seizure of church property in the Desamortización de Mendizábal of 1835-1837. This pact was renounced in 1931, when the secular constitution of the Second Spanish Republic imposed a series of anticlerical measures that threatened the Church's hegemony in Spain, provoking the Church's support for the Francisco Franco uprising five years later.[19] In the ensuing Civil War, alleged Communists and Anarchists in Republican areas killed about 7,000 priests.

Under Franco[edit]

The advent of the Franco regime saw the restoration of the church's privileges. During the Franco years, Roman Catholicism was the only religion to have legal status; other worship services could not be advertised, and only the Catholic Church could own property or publish books. The Government not only continued to pay priests' salaries and to subsidize the Church, but it also assisted in the reconstruction of church buildings damaged by the war. Laws were passed abolishing divorce and civil marriages as well as banning abortion and the sale of contraceptives. Homosexuality and all other forms of sexual permissiveness were also banned. Catholic

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