The ban, initially proposed by far-right Vox social gathering, impacts Muslims celebrating non secular holidays in sports activities centres in Jumilla.
A ban imposed by a southeastern Spanish city on non secular gatherings in public sports activities centres, which is able to primarily have an effect on members of the native Muslim group, has sparked criticism from the left-wing authorities and a United Nations official.
Spain’s Migration Minister Elma Saiz stated on Friday that the ban, authorised by the conservative native authorities of Jumilla final week, was “shameful”, urging native leaders to “take a step again” and apologise to residents.
The ban, authorised by the mayor’s centre-right Well-liked Celebration, can be enacted in sports activities centres utilized by native Muslims in recent times to have a good time non secular holidays like Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.
It was initially proposed by the far-right Vox social gathering, with amendments handed earlier than approval. Earlier this week, Vox’s department within the Murcia area celebrated the measure, saying on X that “Spain is and at all times will probably be a land of Christian roots!”
The city’s mayor, Seve Gonzalez, advised Spain’s El Pais newspaper that the measure didn’t single out anyone group and that her authorities needed to “promote cultural campaigns that defend our id”.
However Mohamed El Ghaidouni, secretary of the Union of Islamic Communities of Spain, stated it amounted to “institutionalised Islamophobia”, taking problem with the native authorities’s assertion that the Muslim festivals celebrated within the centres had been “overseas to the city’s id”.
The ban, he stated, “clashes with the establishments of the Spanish state” that defend non secular freedom.
Saiz advised Spain’s Antena 3 broadcaster that insurance policies just like the ban in Jumilla hurt “residents who’ve been residing for many years in our cities, in our cities, in our nation, contributing and completely built-in with none issues of coexistence”.
Individually, Miguel Moratinos, the UN particular envoy to fight Islamophobia, stated he was “shocked” by the Metropolis Council of Jumilla’s determination and expressed “deep concern in regards to the rise in xenophobic rhetoric and Islamophobic sentiments in some areas in Spain”.
I’m shocked by the choice of the Metropolis Council of Jumilla to ban non secular rituals and/or celebrations in municipal services within the municipality of Jumilla, area of Murcia, Spain.
🔗 Full Assertion ⬇️https://t.co/WHADpxgITo pic.twitter.com/Rd92XMdpVF
— Miguel Ángel Moratinos (@MiguelMoratinos) August 8, 2025
“The choice undermines the best to freedom of thought, conscience, and faith” as enshrined within the Common Declaration of Human Rights, he stated in a press release on Friday.
“Insurance policies that single out or disproportionately have an effect on one group pose a risk to social cohesion and erode the precept of residing collectively in peace,” he added.
Far-right clashes with locals
For hundreds of years, Spain was dominated by Muslims, whose affect is current each within the Spanish language and in lots of the nation’s most celebrated landmarks, together with Granada’s famed Moorish Alhambra Palace.
Islamic rule led to 1492 when the final Arab kingdom in Spain fell to the Catholics.
The ban stipulates that municipal sports activities services can solely be used for athletic actions or occasions organised by native authorities. Beneath no circumstance, it stated, can the centre be used for “cultural, social or non secular actions overseas to the Metropolis Council”.
Its introduction follows clashes between far-right teams and residents and migrants that erupted final month within the southern Murcia area after an aged resident within the city of Torre-Pacheco was overwhelmed up by assailants believed to be of Moroccan origin.
Proper-wing governments elsewhere in Europe have handed measures just like the ban in Jumilla, hanging on the coronary heart of ongoing debates throughout the continent about nationalism and spiritual and cultural pluralism.
Final yr in Monfalcone, a big industrial port metropolis in northeastern Italy with a major Bangladeshi immigrant inhabitants, far-right mayor Anna Maria Cisint banned prayers in a cultural centre.
The transfer led to protests involving some 8,000 individuals, and town’s Muslim group is interesting it in a regional courtroom.