The Evangelical Council of Catalonia (CEC) has announced an agreement with the City Council of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat to avoid the closure of some churches.

According to the entity, the City Council of the second biggest Catalan city after Barcelona sent some of the local evangelical communities “a document warning them of the closure of their places of worship”.

“We have made the necessary steps to reverse this situation and we hope that, very soon, this initial commitment will be recognised by a letter from the City Council”, the CEC has said.

Sources from the City Council of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat have confirmed Spanish news website, Protestante Digital, the negotiations with the CEC and have pointed out that the notice of closure was sent to five churches.

“There have been talks and we have offered individualized accompaniment and advice to the worship places that have not adapted to the regulations”, they explained, without specifying whether they will publish the requested document or not.

According to the City Council, the offer was made after the meetings with the CEC and is not “an agreement not to do things. The places of worship have to comply with the regulations and have to ask for permit”.

Strict requirements

The moratorium on the law on worship places in Catalonia, which obliges evangelical churches previous to 2010 to adapt their facilities to the new regulations, ended this October.

Although this is a regulation issued by the regional government, the local councils are the ones that have to negotiate with the worship places the adaptations to be made.

In recent years, the City Council of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat has been accused by various minority faith groups of demanding very strict requirements to regularise the activity permits.

At the end of 2018, a group of local churches gathered to create a platform and protested in front of the City Council building, because of the difficulties to obtain the necessary licences for their paces of worship.

Among other things, the group denounced that of the more than sixty churches in the city, only nine places of worship had a licence.

United Nations Human Rights Council recommendation

The need to resolve the situation of the worship places in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat and other Catalonian municipalities, was one of the religious freedom recommendations for Spain presenting at the United Nations Human Rights Council session last July.

“Some municipalities, such as the city of l’Hospitalet de Llobregat, have adopted harsher and more arbitrary regulations. The result is that most local congregations are unable to meet the requirements and face a risk of being closed”, the World Evangelical Alliance representative, Markus Stefan Hofer, stated.