Religion in Spain
Encyclopedia
Roman Catholicism is the largest denomination of Christianity
present in Spain
by far. According to a October 2010 study by the Spanish Center of Sociological Research about 73% of Spaniards self-identify as Catholics, 2.2% other faith, and about 22% identify with no religion
. Most Spaniards do not participate regularly in religious worship. This same study shows that of the Spaniards who identify themselves as religious, 56% goes to mass few times a year, 17% go to mass many times a year (varias veces al año), 9% some time per month and 15% every Sunday or multiple times per week. Although a majority of Spaniards are Catholics, most, especially those of the younger generation, ignore the Church's conservative moral doctrines on issues such as pre-marital sex, sexual orientation or contraception. The total number of parish priests has shrunk from 24,300 in 1975 to 19,307 in 2005. Nuns also dropped 6.9% to 54,160 in the period 2000-2005.
According to the most recent Eurobarometer Poll
2005,
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. Agnosticism
and Atheism
enjoy social prestige, according to the general Western European secularization
. Culture war
s 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. 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.
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 of Sociological Research. 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
and other left-leaning parties supporting the measure and People's Party
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 recent waves of immigration, especially during and after the 1990s, have led to an increasing number of Muslim
s, who have about 1 million members. Nowadays, Islam
is the second largest religion in Spain, after Roman Catholicism, accounting for approximately 2.5% of the total population. Hindu
s and Sikh
s account for less than 0.3%. Other religious faiths represented in Spain include the Buddhist
and Bahá'í
Communities. 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. Protestant churches have about 1,200,000 members.
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 Partido Popular
, 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 Partido Popular. 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.
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
). Most of the Iberian Peninsula
was first Christianized 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 Spain was taken over by the Visigoths who had been converted to Arian Christianity
around 360. The Visigothic Kingdom established their capital in Toledo
, their kingdom reaching its high point during the reign of Leovigild. Visigothic rule led to a brief expansion of Arianism
in Spain, however the native population remained staunchly Catholic. In 587, Reccared
, the Visigothic king at Toledo, was 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.
By 711 an Arab
raiding party led by Tariq ibn-Ziyad
crossed the Strait of Gibraltar
, and defeated the Visigothic king Roderic
at the Battle of Guadalete
. Tariq's commander, Musa bin Nusair
landed with substantial reinforcements, and by 718 the Muslims dominated most of the peninsula, establishing Islamic rule that ended in 1492. During this period the number of Muslims increased greatly, though the majority of population remained Christian. While under the status of dhimmi
s the Christian and Jewish subjects had to pay higher taxes than Muslims and they were forbidden from holding positions of power over Muslims. The era of Muslim rule before 1055 is generally considered a "Golden Age" for the Jews as Jewish intellectual and spiritual life flourished in Spain. Only in the northern fringes of the peninsula did Christians remain under Christian rule. Here was established the great pilgrimage centre of Santiago de Compostela
.
In the Middle Ages
, Spain saw a slow Christian re-conquest of Muslim territories. When, in 1147, 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 left. 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
, the Spanish Inquisition
against Muslims and Jews was established by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to complete the religious purification of the Iberian Peninsula
. In the centuries that followed Spain saw itself as the bulwark of Catholicism and doctrinal purity. Spain carried Catholicism to the New World and the Philippines, but the Spanish kings insisted on independence from papal "interference", bishops in their 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 Inquisition was finally abolished only 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. 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. In the ensuing Civil War
, about 7,000 priests were killed
by Communists and Anarchists in Republican areas.
with the Vatican that granted the church an extraordinary set of privileges: mandatory canonical marriages for all Catholics; exemption from government taxation; subsidies for new building construction; censorship of materials the Church deemed offensive; the right to establish universities, to operate radio stations, and to publish newspapers and magazines; protection from police intrusion into church properties; and exemption of military service.
The proclamation of the Second Vatican Council
in favor of religious freedom in 1965 provided more rights to other religious denominations in Spain. In the late 1960s, the Vatican attempted to reform the Church in Spain by appointing interim, or acting, bishops, thereby circumventing Franco's stranglehold on the country's clergy. Many young priests, under foreign influence, became worker priests and participated in anti-regime agitation. Many of them ended as leftist politicians, with some imprisoned in the Concordat prison
reserved for priest prisoners. In 1966, the Franco regime passed a law that freed other religions from many of the earlier restrictions, but the law also reaffirmed the privileges of the Catholic Church. Any attempt to revise the 1953 Concordat met Franco' rigid resistance.
It took the new 1978 Spanish Constitution to confirm the right of Spaniards to religious freedom and to begin the process of disestablishing Catholicism as the state religion. The drafters of the Constitution tried to deal with the intense controversy surrounding state support of the Church, but they were not entirely successful. The initial draft of the Constitution did not even mention the Church, which was included almost as an afterthought and only after intense pressure from the church's leadership. Article 16 disestablishes Roman Catholicism as the official religion and provides that religious liberty for non-Catholics is a state-protected legal right, thereby replacing the policy of limited toleration of non-Catholic religious practices. The article further states, however, that "The public authorities shall take the religious beliefs of Spanish society into account and shall maintain the consequent relations of cooperation with the Catholic Church and the other confessions." In addition, Article 27 also aroused controversy by appearing to pledge continuing government subsidies for private, Church-affiliated schools. These schools were sharply criticized by Spanish Socialists for having created and perpetuated a class-based, separate, and unequal school system. The Constitution, however, includes no affirmation that the majority of Spaniards are Catholics or that the state should take into account the teachings of Catholicism.
The Constitution declares Spain a "non-confessional" state, however it is not a laïque state like France
or Mexico
.
Government financial aid to the Catholic Church was a difficult and contentious issue. The Church argued that, in return for the subsidy, the state had received the social, health, and educational services of tens of thousands of priests and nuns who fulfilled vital functions that the state itself could not have performed at that time. Nevertheless, the revised Concordat was supposed to replace direct state aid to the church with a scheme that would allow taxpayers to designate a certain portion of their taxes to be diverted directly to the Church. Through 1985, taxpayers were allowed to deduct up to 10 percent from their taxable income for donations to the Catholic Church. Partly because of the protests against this arrangement from representatives of Spain's other religious groups and even some from the catholic religion itself, the tax laws were changed in 2007 so that taxpayers could choose between giving 0.52 percent of their income tax to the church and allocating it to the government's welfare and culture budgets. For three years, the government would continue to give the Church a gradually reduced subsidy, but after that the church would have to subsist on its own resources. The government would continue, however, its program of subsidizing Catholic schools, which in 1987 cost the Spanish taxpayers about US$300 million, exclusive of the salaries of teachers, which were paid directly by the Ministry of Education and Science.
, the number of non-Catholics was probably no more than 300,000. About 250,000 of these were of other Christian faiths, including several Protestant denominations, Jehovah's Witnesses
, and Mormons
. The number of Jews in Spain was estimated at about 13,000
Murcia Jewish community. More than 19 out of every 20 Spaniards were baptized Catholics; about 60 percent of them attended Mass; about 30 percent of the baptized Catholics did so regularly, although this figure declined to about 20 percent in the larger cities. As of 1979, about 97 percent of all marriages were performed according to the Catholic religion. A 1982 report by the church claimed that 82 percent of all children born the preceding year had been baptized in the church.
Nevertheless, there were forces at work bringing about fundamental changes in the place of the church in society. One such force was the improvement in the economic fortunes of the great majority of Spaniards, making society more materialistic and less religious. Another force was the massive shift in population from farm and village to the growing urban centers, where the church had less influence over the values of its members. These changes were transforming the way Spaniards defined their religious identity.
Being a Catholic in Spain had less and less to do with regular attendance at Mass
and more to do with the routine observance of important rituals such as baptism, marriage, and burial of the dead. A 1980 survey revealed that, although 82 percent of Spaniards were believers in Catholicism, very few considered themselves to be very good practitioners of the faith. In the case of the youth of the country, even smaller percentages believed themselves to be "very good" or "practicing" Catholics.
In contrast to an earlier era, when rejection of the church went along with education, in the late 1980s studies showed that the more educated a person was, the more likely he or she was to be a practicing Catholic. This new acceptance of the church was due partly to the church's new self-restraint in politics. In a significant change from the pre-Civil War era, the church had accepted the need for the separation of religion and the state, and it had even discouraged the creation of a Christian Democratic party in the country.
The traditional links between the political right and the church no longer dictated political preferences; in the 1982 general election, more than half of the country's practicing Catholics voted for the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
. Although the Socialist leadership professed agnosticism
, according to surveys between 40 and 45 percent of the party's rank-and-file members held religious beliefs, and more than 70 percent of these professed to be Catholics. Among those entering the party after Franco's death, about half considered themselves Catholic.
One important indicator of the changes taking place in the role of the church was the reduction in the number of Spaniards in Holy Orders. In 1984 the country had more than 22,000 parish priests, nearly 10,000 ordained monks, and nearly 75,000 nuns. These numbers concealed a troubling reality, however. More than 70 percent of the diocesan clergy was between the ages of 35 and 65; the average age of the clergy in 1982 was 49 years. At the upper end of the age range, the low numbers reflected the impact of the Civil War, in which more than 4,000 parish priests died. At the lower end, the scarcity of younger priests reflected the general crisis in vocations throughout the world, which began to be felt in the 1960s. Its effects were felt especially acutely in Spain. The crisis was seen in the decline in the number of young men joining the priesthood and in the increase in the number of priests leaving Holy Orders. The number of seminarists
in Spain fell from more than 9,000 in the 1950s to only 1,500 in 1979, even though it rose slightly in 1982 to about 1,700. In 2008, there were just 1,221 students in these theological schools.
Changes in the social meaning of religious vocations were perhaps part of the problem; having a priest in the family no longer seemed to spark the kind of pride that family members would have felt in the past. The principal reason in most cases, though, was the church's continued ban on marriage for priests. Previously, the crisis was not particularly serious because of the age distribution of the clergy. As the twentieth century neared an end, however, a serious imbalance appeared between those entering the priesthood and those leaving it. The effects of this crisis were already visible in the decline in the number of parish priests in Spain—from 23,620 in 1979 to just over 22,000 by 1983 and 19,307 in 2005. New ordinations also dropped 19% from 241 in 1998 to 196 in 2008, with all-time record lows of 168 priests out of 45 million Spaniards taking their vows in 2007. The number of nuns shrank 6.9% to 54,160 in the period 2000-2005 as well.
Another sign of the church's declining role in Spanish life was the diminishing importance of the controversial secular religious institute, Opus Dei
(Work of God). Opus Dei was a worldwide lay religious body that did not adhere to any particular political philosophy and was allegedly nonpolitical. The organization was founded in 1928 by a Spanish priest, Jose Maria Escriva de Balaguer y Albas, as a reaction to the increasing secularization of Spain's universities, and higher education continued to be one of the institute's foremost priorities. Despite its public commitment to a nonpolitical stance, Opus Dei members rose to occupy key positions in the Franco regime, especially in the field of economic policy-making in the late 1950s and the early 1960s. Opus Dei members dominated the group of liberal technocrats who engineered the opening of Spain's autarchic economy
after 1957. After the 1973 assassination of Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco
(often rumored to be an Opus Dei member), however, the influence of the institute declined sharply. The secrecy of the order and its activities and the power of its myth helped it maintain its strong position of influence in Spain; but there was little doubt that, compared with the 1950s and the 1960s, Opus Dei had fallen from being one of the country's chief political organizations to being simply one among many such groups competing for power in an open and pluralist society.
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
present in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
by far. According to a October 2010 study by the Spanish Center of Sociological Research about 73% of Spaniards self-identify as Catholics, 2.2% other faith, and about 22% identify with no religion
Irreligion
Irreligion is defined as an absence of religion or an indifference towards religion. Sometimes it may also be defined more narrowly as hostility towards religion. When characterized as hostility to religion, it includes antitheism, anticlericalism and antireligion. When characterized as...
. Most Spaniards do not participate regularly in religious worship. This same study shows that of the Spaniards who identify themselves as religious, 56% goes to mass few times a year, 17% go to mass many times a year (varias veces al año), 9% some time per month and 15% every Sunday or multiple times per week. Although a majority of Spaniards are Catholics, most, especially those of the younger generation, ignore the Church's conservative moral doctrines on issues such as pre-marital sex, sexual orientation or contraception. The total number of parish priests has shrunk from 24,300 in 1975 to 19,307 in 2005. Nuns also dropped 6.9% to 54,160 in the period 2000-2005.
Attitudes
Eurobarometer
Eurobarometer is a series of surveys regularly performed on behalf of the European Commission since 1973. It produces reports of public opinion of certain issues relating to the European Union across the member states...
2005,
- 59% of Spanish citizens 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."
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
Mass (liturgy)
"Mass" is one of the names by which the sacrament of the Eucharist is called in the Roman Catholic Church: others are "Eucharist", the "Lord's Supper", the "Breaking of Bread", the "Eucharistic assembly ", the "memorial of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection", the "Holy Sacrifice", the "Holy and...
regularly. Agnosticism
Agnosticism
Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable....
and Atheism
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
enjoy social prestige, according to the general Western European secularization
Religion in Europe
Religion in Europe has been a major influence on art, culture, philosophy and law. The largest religion in Europe for at least a millennium and a half has been Christianity. Two countries in Southeastern Europe have Muslim majorities, while two more Muslim countries located mostly in Asia have...
. Culture war
Culture war
The culture war in American usage is a metaphor used to claim that political conflict is based on sets of conflicting cultural values. The term frequently implies a conflict between those values considered traditionalist or conservative and those considered progressive or liberal...
s are far more related to politics than religion, and the huge lack of popularity of typically religion-related issues like Creationism
Creationism
Creationism is the religious beliefthat humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being, most often referring to the Abrahamic god. As science developed from the 18th century onwards, various views developed which aimed to reconcile science with the Genesis...
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. 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.
Evidence of the secular nature of contemporary Spain can be seen in the widespread support for the legalization of same-sex marriage in Spain
Same-sex marriage in Spain
Same-sex marriage in Spain has been legal since July 3, 2005. In 2004, the nation's newly elected social democratic government, led by President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, began a campaign for its legalization, including the right of adoption by same-sex couples...
— over 70% of Spaniards support gay marriage according to a 2004 study by the Centre of Sociological Research. 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
Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party is a social-democratic political party in Spain. Its political position is Centre-left. The PSOE is the former ruling party of Spain, until beaten in the elections of November 2011 and the second oldest, exceeded only by the Partido Carlista, founded in...
and other left-leaning parties supporting the measure and People's Party
People's Party (Spain)
The People's Party is a conservative political party in Spain.The People's Party was a re-foundation in 1989 of the People's Alliance , a party led and founded by Manuel Fraga Iribarne, a former Minister of Tourism during Francisco Franco's dictatorship...
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.
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
s, who have about 1 million members. Nowadays, Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
is the second largest religion in Spain, after Roman Catholicism, accounting for approximately 2.5% of the total population. Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
s and Sikh
Sikh
A Sikh is a follower of Sikhism. It primarily originated in the 15th century in the Punjab region of South Asia. The term "Sikh" has its origin in Sanskrit term शिष्य , meaning "disciple, student" or शिक्ष , meaning "instruction"...
s account for less than 0.3%. Other religious faiths represented in Spain include the Buddhist
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
and Bahá'í
Bahá'í Faith
The Bahá'í Faith is a monotheistic religion founded by Bahá'u'lláh in 19th-century Persia, emphasizing the spiritual unity of all humankind. There are an estimated five to six million Bahá'ís around the world in more than 200 countries and territories....
Communities. Jews account for less than 1 percent of the population, mostly in Barcelona, Madrid and Murcia. Protestantism
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
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. Protestant churches have about 1,200,000 members.
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
Opus Dei
Opus Dei, formally known as The Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei , is an organization of the Catholic Church that teaches that everyone is called to holiness and that ordinary life is a path to sanctity. The majority of its membership are lay people, with secular priests under the...
, the Neocatechumenal Way
Neocatechumenal Way
The Neocatechumenal Way, also known as the Neocatechumenate, NC Way or, colloquially, The Way or The Neocats is an itinerary within the Catholic Church dedicated to the Christian formation of adults...
or the Legion of Christ
Legion of Christ
The Legion of Christ is a Roman Catholic congregation of pontifical right, made up of priests and seminarians studying for the priesthood. It was founded in Mexico in 1941, by Fr. Marcial Maciel, who directed the congregation as its General Superior until January 2005...
, especially personated through important politicians in the right-wing Partido Popular
People's Party (Spain)
The People's Party is a conservative political party in Spain.The People's Party was a re-foundation in 1989 of the People's Alliance , a party led and founded by Manuel Fraga Iribarne, a former Minister of Tourism during Francisco Franco's dictatorship...
, 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 Partido Popular. 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
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, it has been observed, is a nation-state born out of religious struggle mainly between Catholicism
Catholicism
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
and Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
, but also against Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
(and, to a lesser extent, Protestantism
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
). Most of the Iberian Peninsula
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...
was first Christianized while still part of the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
. As Rome declined, Germanic tribes invaded most of the lands of the former empire. In the years following 410 Spain was taken over by the Visigoths who had been converted to Arian Christianity
Arianism
Arianism is the theological teaching attributed to Arius , a Christian presbyter from Alexandria, Egypt, concerning the relationship of the entities of the Trinity and the precise nature of the Son of God as being a subordinate entity to God the Father...
around 360. The Visigothic Kingdom established their capital in Toledo
Toledo, Spain
Toledo's Alcázar became renowned in the 19th and 20th centuries as a military academy. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 its garrison was famously besieged by Republican forces.-Economy:...
, their kingdom reaching its high point during the reign of Leovigild. Visigothic rule led to a brief expansion of Arianism
Arianism
Arianism is the theological teaching attributed to Arius , a Christian presbyter from Alexandria, Egypt, concerning the relationship of the entities of the Trinity and the precise nature of the Son of God as being a subordinate entity to God the Father...
in Spain, however the native population remained staunchly Catholic. In 587, Reccared
Reccared
Reccared I was Visigothic King of Hispania, Septimania and Galicia. His reign marked a climactic shift in history, with the king's renunciation of traditional Arianism in favour of Catholic Christianity in 587.Reccared was the younger son of King Liuvigild by his first wife Theodosia...
, the Visigothic king at Toledo, was 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.
By 711 an Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
raiding party led by Tariq ibn-Ziyad
Tariq ibn-Ziyad
Tariq ibn Ziyad was a Muslim Berber general who led the Islamic conquest of Visigothic Hispania in 711 A.D. He is considered to be one of the most important military commanders in Iberian history. Under the orders of the Umayyad Caliph Al-Walid I he led a large army from the north coast of...
crossed the Strait of Gibraltar
Strait of Gibraltar
The Strait of Gibraltar is a narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates Spain in Europe from Morocco in Africa. The name comes from Gibraltar, which in turn originates from the Arabic Jebel Tariq , albeit the Arab name for the Strait is Bab el-Zakat or...
, and defeated the Visigothic king Roderic
Roderic
Ruderic was the Visigothic King of Hispania for a brief period between 710 and 712. He is famous in legend as "the last king of the Goths"...
at the Battle of Guadalete
Battle of Guadalete
The Battle of Guadalete was fought in 711 or 712 at an unidentified location between the Christian Visigoths of Hispania under their king, Roderic, and an invading force of Muslim Arabs and Berbers under Ṭāriq ibn Ziyad. The battle was significant as the culmination of a series of Arab-Berber...
. Tariq's commander, Musa bin Nusair
Musa bin Nusair
Musa bin Nusayr al-Balawi was a balawi who served as a governor and general under the Umayad caliph Al-Walid I. He had ruled over the Muslim provinces of North Africa , and directed the islamic opening of the Visigothic kingdom in Hispania....
landed with substantial reinforcements, and by 718 the Muslims dominated most of the peninsula, establishing Islamic rule that ended in 1492. During this period the number of Muslims increased greatly, though the majority of population remained Christian. While under the status of dhimmi
Dhimmi
A , is a non-Muslim subject of a state governed in accordance with sharia law. Linguistically, the word means "one whose responsibility has been taken". This has to be understood in the context of the definition of state in Islam...
s the Christian and Jewish subjects had to pay higher taxes than Muslims and they were forbidden from holding positions of power over Muslims. The era of Muslim rule before 1055 is generally considered a "Golden Age" for the Jews as Jewish intellectual and spiritual life flourished in Spain. Only in the northern fringes of the peninsula did Christians remain under Christian rule. Here was established the great pilgrimage centre of Santiago de Compostela
Santiago de Compostela
Santiago de Compostela is the capital of the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain.The city's Cathedral is the destination today, as it has been throughout history, of the important 9th century medieval pilgrimage route, the Way of St. James...
.
In the Middle Ages
Spain in the Middle Ages
After the disorders of the passage of the Vandals and Alans down the Mediterranean coast of Hispania from 408, the history of Medieval Spain begins with the Iberian kingdom of the Arianist Visigoths , who were converted to Catholicism with their king Reccared in 587...
, Spain saw a slow Christian re-conquest of Muslim territories. When, in 1147, 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
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
and Christians left. 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
Reconquista
The Reconquista was a period of almost 800 years in the Middle Ages during which several Christian kingdoms succeeded in retaking the Muslim-controlled areas of the Iberian Peninsula broadly known as Al-Andalus...
, in which Christian Spaniards fought to drive out the Muslims
Moors
The description Moors has referred to several historic and modern populations of the Maghreb region who are predominately of Berber and Arab descent. They came to conquer and rule the Iberian Peninsula for nearly 800 years. At that time they were Muslim, although earlier the people had followed...
, the Spanish Inquisition
Spanish Inquisition
The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition , commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition , was a tribunal established in 1480 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms, and to replace the Medieval...
against Muslims and Jews was established by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to complete the religious purification of the Iberian Peninsula
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...
. In the centuries that followed Spain saw itself as the bulwark of Catholicism and doctrinal purity. Spain carried Catholicism to the New World and the Philippines, but the Spanish kings insisted on independence from papal "interference", bishops in their 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 Inquisition was finally abolished only 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
Holy See
The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...
that committed Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
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. This pact was renounced in 1931, when the secular constitution of the Second Spanish Republic
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
imposed a series of anticlerical measures that threatened the Church's hegemony in Spain, provoking the Church's support for the Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
uprising five years later. In the ensuing Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, about 7,000 priests were killed
Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War
Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War is the name given by the Catholic Church to the people who were killed by Republicans during the war because of their faith. As of July 2008, almost one thousand Spanish martyrs have been beatified or canonized...
by Communists and Anarchists in Republican areas.
Under Franco
The advent of the Franco regime saw the restoration of the church's rights. 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 religious instruction was mandatory, even in public schools. Franco secured in return the right to name Roman Catholic bishops in Spain, as well as veto power over appointments of clergy down to the parish priest level. In 1953 this close cooperation was formalized in a new ConcordatConcordat of 1953
The Concordat of 1953 was the last classic concordat of the Roman Catholic Church. Concluded by Spain with the Vatican, and together with the Pact of Madrid, signed the same year, it was a significant effort to break Spain's international isolation after World War II .In return for the granting...
with the Vatican that granted the church an extraordinary set of privileges: mandatory canonical marriages for all Catholics; exemption from government taxation; subsidies for new building construction; censorship of materials the Church deemed offensive; the right to establish universities, to operate radio stations, and to publish newspapers and magazines; protection from police intrusion into church properties; and exemption of military service.
The proclamation of the Second Vatican Council
Second Vatican Council
The Second Vatican Council addressed relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the modern world. It was the twenty-first Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church and the second to be held at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. It opened under Pope John XXIII on 11 October 1962 and closed...
in favor of religious freedom in 1965 provided more rights to other religious denominations in Spain. In the late 1960s, the Vatican attempted to reform the Church in Spain by appointing interim, or acting, bishops, thereby circumventing Franco's stranglehold on the country's clergy. Many young priests, under foreign influence, became worker priests and participated in anti-regime agitation. Many of them ended as leftist politicians, with some imprisoned in the Concordat prison
Concordat prison
The Concordat prison refers to the prison that the Francisco Franco regime in Spain operated for dissident Catholic priests. It was located in Zamora....
reserved for priest prisoners. In 1966, the Franco regime passed a law that freed other religions from many of the earlier restrictions, but the law also reaffirmed the privileges of the Catholic Church. Any attempt to revise the 1953 Concordat met Franco' rigid resistance.
Restoration of the monarchy
In 1976, however, King Juan Carlos de Borbon unilaterally renounced the right to name the bishops; later that year, Madrid and the Vatican signed a new accord that restored to the church its right to name bishops, and the Church agreed to a revised Concordat that entailed a gradual financial separation of church and state. Church property not used for religious purposes was henceforth to be subject to taxation, and over a period of years, the Church's reliance on state subsidies was to be gradually reduced. The timetable for this reduction was not adhered to, however, and the church continued to receive the public subsidy through 1987 (US$110 million in that year alone).It took the new 1978 Spanish Constitution to confirm the right of Spaniards to religious freedom and to begin the process of disestablishing Catholicism as the state religion. The drafters of the Constitution tried to deal with the intense controversy surrounding state support of the Church, but they were not entirely successful. The initial draft of the Constitution did not even mention the Church, which was included almost as an afterthought and only after intense pressure from the church's leadership. Article 16 disestablishes Roman Catholicism as the official religion and provides that religious liberty for non-Catholics is a state-protected legal right, thereby replacing the policy of limited toleration of non-Catholic religious practices. The article further states, however, that "The public authorities shall take the religious beliefs of Spanish society into account and shall maintain the consequent relations of cooperation with the Catholic Church and the other confessions." In addition, Article 27 also aroused controversy by appearing to pledge continuing government subsidies for private, Church-affiliated schools. These schools were sharply criticized by Spanish Socialists for having created and perpetuated a class-based, separate, and unequal school system. The Constitution, however, includes no affirmation that the majority of Spaniards are Catholics or that the state should take into account the teachings of Catholicism.
The Constitution declares Spain a "non-confessional" state, however it is not a laïque state like France
Religion in France
France is a country where freedom of religion and freedom of thought are guaranteed by virtue of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The Republic is based on the principle of laïcité enforced by the 1880s Jules Ferry laws and the 1905 French law on the Separation of the...
or Mexico
Religion in Mexico
Mexico has no official religion, and the Constitution of 1917 imposed limitations on the church and sometimes codified state intrusion into church matters. The government doesn't provide financial contributions to the church, nor does the church participate in public education...
.
Government financial aid to the Catholic Church was a difficult and contentious issue. The Church argued that, in return for the subsidy, the state had received the social, health, and educational services of tens of thousands of priests and nuns who fulfilled vital functions that the state itself could not have performed at that time. Nevertheless, the revised Concordat was supposed to replace direct state aid to the church with a scheme that would allow taxpayers to designate a certain portion of their taxes to be diverted directly to the Church. Through 1985, taxpayers were allowed to deduct up to 10 percent from their taxable income for donations to the Catholic Church. Partly because of the protests against this arrangement from representatives of Spain's other religious groups and even some from the catholic religion itself, the tax laws were changed in 2007 so that taxpayers could choose between giving 0.52 percent of their income tax to the church and allocating it to the government's welfare and culture budgets. For three years, the government would continue to give the Church a gradually reduced subsidy, but after that the church would have to subsist on its own resources. The government would continue, however, its program of subsidizing Catholic schools, which in 1987 cost the Spanish taxpayers about US$300 million, exclusive of the salaries of teachers, which were paid directly by the Ministry of Education and Science.
Democratic Spain
In a population of about 39 million at the beginning of TransitionSpanish transition to democracy
The Spanish transition to democracy was the era when Spain moved from the dictatorship of Francisco Franco to a liberal democratic state. The transition is usually said to have begun with Franco’s death on 20 November 1975, while its completion has been variously said to be marked by the Spanish...
, the number of non-Catholics was probably no more than 300,000. About 250,000 of these were of other Christian faiths, including several Protestant denominations, Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The religion reports worldwide membership of over 7 million adherents involved in evangelism, convention attendance of over 12 million, and annual...
, and Mormons
Mormons
The Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, a religion started by Joseph Smith during the American Second Great Awakening. A vast majority of Mormons are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints while a minority are members of other independent churches....
. The number of Jews in Spain was estimated at about 13,000
Murcia Jewish community. More than 19 out of every 20 Spaniards were baptized Catholics; about 60 percent of them attended Mass; about 30 percent of the baptized Catholics did so regularly, although this figure declined to about 20 percent in the larger cities. As of 1979, about 97 percent of all marriages were performed according to the Catholic religion. A 1982 report by the church claimed that 82 percent of all children born the preceding year had been baptized in the church.
Nevertheless, there were forces at work bringing about fundamental changes in the place of the church in society. One such force was the improvement in the economic fortunes of the great majority of Spaniards, making society more materialistic and less religious. Another force was the massive shift in population from farm and village to the growing urban centers, where the church had less influence over the values of its members. These changes were transforming the way Spaniards defined their religious identity.
Being a Catholic in Spain had less and less to do with regular attendance at Mass
Mass
Mass can be defined as a quantitive measure of the resistance an object has to change in its velocity.In physics, mass commonly refers to any of the following three properties of matter, which have been shown experimentally to be equivalent:...
and more to do with the routine observance of important rituals such as baptism, marriage, and burial of the dead. A 1980 survey revealed that, although 82 percent of Spaniards were believers in Catholicism, very few considered themselves to be very good practitioners of the faith. In the case of the youth of the country, even smaller percentages believed themselves to be "very good" or "practicing" Catholics.
In contrast to an earlier era, when rejection of the church went along with education, in the late 1980s studies showed that the more educated a person was, the more likely he or she was to be a practicing Catholic. This new acceptance of the church was due partly to the church's new self-restraint in politics. In a significant change from the pre-Civil War era, the church had accepted the need for the separation of religion and the state, and it had even discouraged the creation of a Christian Democratic party in the country.
The traditional links between the political right and the church no longer dictated political preferences; in the 1982 general election, more than half of the country's practicing Catholics voted for the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party is a social-democratic political party in Spain. Its political position is Centre-left. The PSOE is the former ruling party of Spain, until beaten in the elections of November 2011 and the second oldest, exceeded only by the Partido Carlista, founded in...
. Although the Socialist leadership professed agnosticism
Agnosticism
Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable....
, according to surveys between 40 and 45 percent of the party's rank-and-file members held religious beliefs, and more than 70 percent of these professed to be Catholics. Among those entering the party after Franco's death, about half considered themselves Catholic.
One important indicator of the changes taking place in the role of the church was the reduction in the number of Spaniards in Holy Orders. In 1984 the country had more than 22,000 parish priests, nearly 10,000 ordained monks, and nearly 75,000 nuns. These numbers concealed a troubling reality, however. More than 70 percent of the diocesan clergy was between the ages of 35 and 65; the average age of the clergy in 1982 was 49 years. At the upper end of the age range, the low numbers reflected the impact of the Civil War, in which more than 4,000 parish priests died. At the lower end, the scarcity of younger priests reflected the general crisis in vocations throughout the world, which began to be felt in the 1960s. Its effects were felt especially acutely in Spain. The crisis was seen in the decline in the number of young men joining the priesthood and in the increase in the number of priests leaving Holy Orders. The number of seminarists
Seminary
A seminary, theological college, or divinity school is an institution of secondary or post-secondary education for educating students in theology, generally to prepare them for ordination as clergy or for other ministry...
in Spain fell from more than 9,000 in the 1950s to only 1,500 in 1979, even though it rose slightly in 1982 to about 1,700. In 2008, there were just 1,221 students in these theological schools.
Changes in the social meaning of religious vocations were perhaps part of the problem; having a priest in the family no longer seemed to spark the kind of pride that family members would have felt in the past. The principal reason in most cases, though, was the church's continued ban on marriage for priests. Previously, the crisis was not particularly serious because of the age distribution of the clergy. As the twentieth century neared an end, however, a serious imbalance appeared between those entering the priesthood and those leaving it. The effects of this crisis were already visible in the decline in the number of parish priests in Spain—from 23,620 in 1979 to just over 22,000 by 1983 and 19,307 in 2005. New ordinations also dropped 19% from 241 in 1998 to 196 in 2008, with all-time record lows of 168 priests out of 45 million Spaniards taking their vows in 2007. The number of nuns shrank 6.9% to 54,160 in the period 2000-2005 as well.
Another sign of the church's declining role in Spanish life was the diminishing importance of the controversial secular religious institute, Opus Dei
Opus Dei
Opus Dei, formally known as The Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei , is an organization of the Catholic Church that teaches that everyone is called to holiness and that ordinary life is a path to sanctity. The majority of its membership are lay people, with secular priests under the...
(Work of God). Opus Dei was a worldwide lay religious body that did not adhere to any particular political philosophy and was allegedly nonpolitical. The organization was founded in 1928 by a Spanish priest, Jose Maria Escriva de Balaguer y Albas, as a reaction to the increasing secularization of Spain's universities, and higher education continued to be one of the institute's foremost priorities. Despite its public commitment to a nonpolitical stance, Opus Dei members rose to occupy key positions in the Franco regime, especially in the field of economic policy-making in the late 1950s and the early 1960s. Opus Dei members dominated the group of liberal technocrats who engineered the opening of Spain's autarchic economy
Autarky
Autarky is the quality of being self-sufficient. Usually the term is applied to political states or their economic policies. Autarky exists whenever an entity can survive or continue its activities without external assistance. Autarky is not necessarily economic. For example, a military autarky...
after 1957. After the 1973 assassination of Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco
Luis Carrero Blanco
Don Luis Carrero Blanco, 1st Duke of Carrero Blanco, Grandee of Spain was a Spanish admiral and long-time confidant of dictator Francisco Franco.- Biography :...
(often rumored to be an Opus Dei member), however, the influence of the institute declined sharply. The secrecy of the order and its activities and the power of its myth helped it maintain its strong position of influence in Spain; but there was little doubt that, compared with the 1950s and the 1960s, Opus Dei had fallen from being one of the country's chief political organizations to being simply one among many such groups competing for power in an open and pluralist society.
See also
- Spanish society after the democratic transitionSpanish society after the democratic transitionAfter the restoration of democracy in the late 1970s, the changes in everyday Spanish life were as radical as the political transformation. They are famously known as the La Movida...
- Roman Catholicism in SpainRoman Catholicism in SpainThe Spanish Catholic Church, part of the global Roman Catholic Church, is under the spiritual leadership of the Pope, curia in Rome, and the Conference of Spanish Bishops.-Statistics:...
- Islam in SpainIslam in SpainIslam in Spain has had a fundamental presence in the culture and history of the nation. The religion was present in modern Spanish soil from 711 until 1492 under the rule of the Arabs and Moors of al-Andalus. For key historical dates, see Timeline of the Muslim presence in the Iberian peninsula...
- Opus Dei in Spain
- History of the Jews in SpainHistory of the Jews in SpainSpanish Jews once constituted one of the largest and most prosperous Jewish communities under Muslim and Christian rule in Spain, before the majority, together with resident Muslims, were forced to convert to Catholicism, be expelled or be killed when Spain became united under the Catholic Monarchs...
- Bahá'í Faith in SpainBahá'í Faith in SpainThe Bahá'í Faith in Spain begins with coverage of events in the history of the Bábí religion in the 1850s. The first mention of Spain in Bahá'í literature was `Abdu'l-Bahá mentioning it as a place to take the religion to in 1916. The first Bahá'í to visit Spain was in 1930 and the first pioneer to...
- Palmarian Church, a dissident branch of the Catholic Church based on El Palmar de TroyaEl Palmar de TroyaEl Palmar de Troya is a village dependent on the near town of Utrera in Andalusia in south-western Spain with a population of 2,423. It is particularly known for the cathedral of the Palmarian Catholic Church, a schismatic Catholic sect founded by Clemente Domínguez y Gómez in the 1970s as a result...
. - Religion by country
- Religion in EuropeReligion in EuropeReligion in Europe has been a major influence on art, culture, philosophy and law. The largest religion in Europe for at least a millennium and a half has been Christianity. Two countries in Southeastern Europe have Muslim majorities, while two more Muslim countries located mostly in Asia have...