Muslim communities in Spain spoke out against what they consider discriminatory measures, after a motion was passed to prevent them from holding religious celebrations at sports centres in the southeastern town of Jumilla, located in the region of Murcia, with a population of around 26,000.

The motion, which was presented by the far-right party Vox, aimed to defend “the customs and traditions of the Spanish people” against “foreign cultural practices”, such as the Islamic Feast of the Lamb.

In 2025, as in previous years, the Town Council has made a municipal sports centre available for Muslim worshippers to hold prayers on special occasions when attendance is higher.

Vox's motion was amended by the People’s Party (PP, conservatives), which focuses on keeping sports centres “exclusively for sports or events and activities organised by the Jumilla Town Council, and never for cultural, social or religious activities not related to the Town Council”.

It also promotes “cultural activities, campaigns and proposals that defend our identity and protect traditional religious values and expressions in our country”.

The amendment was approved with 10 votes in favour from the PP, and votes against from the PSOE (social democrats), and Leftist party IU-Podemos-AV. Vox abstained.

Public debate

In addition to political parties, other social groups have also spoken out about the issue.

In an interview with ElDiario, Monir Binjilon, president of the Spanish Federation of Islamic Religious Entities (FEERI), said that “Muslims in the region of Murcia feel very disappointed”.

“We do not understand how politicians in this country want to destroy the entire fight for the defence of religious freedoms and fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution”, he added.

For Binjilon, obstructing religious freedom is a “serious crime. We can only describe it as racism and Islamophobia”.

The Spanish Islamic Commission has not yet issued a statement on the Jumilla case, but a few days ago it spoke out following racist incidents in another city in the Murcia region. “We must demand respect for our religious community and our mosques, and we must strongly reject all hate speech and aggression against believers and places of worship of any religious denomination”, they stated.

“We are suffering from widespread hate speech against Islam, Muslims and mosques, which is a precursor to hate crimes. Hate speech itself can constitute a crime when it encourages, promotes or incites hatred, hostility, discrimination or violence”.

Catholics and evangelicals

Meanwhile, the Conference of Roman Catholic Bishops of Spain expressed its support for the Muslim community, stating that restricting worship “violates the fundamental rights of every human being and affects not only one religious group, but all religious denominations”.

“Imposing these restrictions on religious grounds is discrimination that cannot be allowed in democratic societies”, they added.

The Federation of Evangelical Religious Entities of Spain (FEREDE) also released a statement expressing concern over the motion passed in Jumilla.

“Religious freedom includes the right to publicly express one's religious beliefs and the right to worship in both private and public spaces designated for that purpose […] attempting to reduce that freedom to the strictly private sphere or to specifically religious premises ignores its true legal and constitutional scope”, pointed out FEREDE.

Thery also called on public authorities “to treat the right to religious freedom with the utmost seriousness and responsibility”.

In an article published in Evangelical Focus, Xesús Manuel Suárez, the secretary general of the Spanish Evangelical Alliance, delves into the debate on how the authorities do not adequately understand the concept of secularism.

“The separation of church and state must leave the doors of the public square open to all beliefs and non-beliefs, and secularism must renounce imposing an anti-religious code of values and relegating faith to the private sphere. It must allow the free competition of ideas in the public”, says Suarez.

The evangelical leader says he also wishes Muslim communities in Spain would publicly advocate for the same religious freedom and right to use public facilities in Muslim-culture countries.

Media coverage

This issue has also made the front pages of several Spanish newspapers.

An editorial in ABC, a conservative newspaper, criticises the measure, stating that “it is unreasonable to single out a particular community for its known and practised customs and to declare, in general terms, that they are incompatible with the values of Spanish society”.

The author of the editorial also points out that collective prayers or the Feast of the Lamb are not a threat to “national identity”, but rather the situation of women, the education of girls, forced marriages and hostility towards freedoms in Islam. They call for the debate to focus “clearly” on “the causes of European societies' fears about the growth of Islamic communities”.

The editorial in the newspaper El País criticises that the approved measure “protects what in fact implies hindering religious freedom and freedom of worship, a fundamental right protected by the Constitution”.

“This brings Vox's increasingly radical anti-immigrant rhetoric into the institutions. We cannot allow division among citizens who share the same rights, creating a divide between 'us' and 'them', 'good' and 'bad'. Today it is because of their religion; tomorrow it will be because of their skin colour, political ideas, or any other prejudice held by those in power”, it concludes.