A ban imposed by a southeastern Spanish town on religious gatherings in public sports centers has sparked criticism from the left-wing government and a United Nations official. The ban, approved by the conservative local government of Jumilla last week, affects Muslims celebrating religious holidays in sports centers. Spain’s Migration Minister Elma Saiz said on Friday that the ban was “shameful,” urging local leaders to “take a step back” and apologize to residents.
The ban, originally proposed by the far-right Vox party, would be enacted in sports centers used by local Muslims in recent years to celebrate religious holidays like Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. Vox’s branch in the Murcia region celebrated the measure, saying on X that “Spain is and always will be a land of Christian roots!” The town’s mayor, Seve Gonzalez, told Spain’s El Pais newspaper that the measure did not single out any one group and that her government wanted to “promote cultural campaigns that defend our identity.”
However, Mohamed El Ghaidouni, secretary of the Union of Islamic Communities of Spain, said the ban amounted to “institutionalized Islamophobia,” taking issue with the local government’s assertion that the Muslim festivals celebrated in the centers were “foreign to the town’s identity.” The ban, he said, “clashes with the institutions of the Spanish state” that protect religious freedom. Saiz told Spain’s Antena 3 broadcaster that policies like the ban in Jumilla harm “citizens who have been living for decades in our towns, in our cities, in our country, contributing and perfectly integrated without any problems of coexistence.”
Miguel Moratinos, the UN special envoy to combat Islamophobia, said he was “shocked” by the City Council of Jumilla’s decision and expressed “deep concern about the rise in xenophobic rhetoric and Islamophobic sentiments in some regions in Spain.” “The decision undermines the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion” as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he said in a statement on Friday. “Policies that single out or disproportionately affect one community pose a threat to social cohesion and erode the principle of living together in peace,” he added.
For centuries, Spain was ruled by Muslims, whose influence is present both in the Spanish language and in many of the country’s most celebrated landmarks, including Granada’s famed Moorish Alhambra Palace. Islamic rule ended in 1492 when the last Arab kingdom in Spain fell to the Catholics. The ban stipulates that municipal sports facilities can only be used for athletic activities or events organized by local authorities. Under no circumstance, it said, can the center be used for “cultural, social or religious activities foreign to the City Council.”
The introduction of the ban follows clashes between far-right groups and residents and migrants that erupted last month in the southern Murcia region after an elderly resident in the town of Torre-Pacheco was beaten up by assailants believed to be of Moroccan origin.
Right-wing governments elsewhere in Europe have passed measures similar to the ban in Jumilla, striking at the heart of ongoing debates across the continent about nationalism and religious and cultural pluralism. Last year in Monfalcone, a large industrial port city in northeastern Italy with a significant Bangladeshi immigrant population, far-right mayor Anna Maria Cisint banned prayers in a cultural center. The move led to protests involving some 8,000 people, and the city’s Muslim community is appealing it in a regional court.