Catalan municipalities will no longer have to save land for new religious centres

Barcelona (ACN).- Catalan town halls will not be any longer obliged to save land for the construction of new religious centres. The Catalan Government, run by the Centre-Right Catalan Nationalist Coalition ‘Convergència i Unió’ (CiU) –which involves the Catalan Christian-Democrat party–, approved this Tuesday to modify the Worship Centres Law from 2009, passed by the previous Government. The main change is that municipalities will not have the obligation to reserve land plots for new worship centres in their town planning projects. In the last years, there have been controversies in some Catalan towns, such as Salt, Lleida or Torroella de Montgrí, regarding the construction of new mosques. Other towns and villages in Catalonia also complained that the law was obliging them to reserve urban plots for new centres, without considering if they had the need for them or not. The Catalan Government’s modification will not impose architectural aspects but will allow the town hall to decide on aesthetics and architectural requirements. In addition, the new centres will have to fulfil all security measures as well as acoustic isolation in order not to disturb neighbours. The Government’s proposal enlarges the adaptation time to fulfil the security requirements, passing from a 5 year period to a 10 year one. Members of minority religions in Catalonia understand that the law’s modification will oblige a reconsideration of ongoing projects, creating more difficulties in the construction of new worship centres.

Torroella de Montgrí, in the Costa Brava, has been the latest town with discussions over the construction of a new mosque. In the last weeks,  the town hall, resulting from last May elections, decided to stop the planning of the new mosque, which had been discussed for the last seven years. The reasons given by the town hall were related to technical aspects regarding security, as well as aesthetical reasons. Promoters were asked to modify the project in order to meet with “traditional architectural aspects”, among other criteria. The mosque was foreseeing a minaret, which the town hall thought it was not in line with the area’s tradition.

The Catalan Government’s modification will allow local administrations to decide on architectural and aesthetic aspects of the new religious centres. Members of minority religions feel that now they will find more difficulties to build their worship centres and that ongoing projects will need to be discussed and planned again.

Government sources emphasise that the previous law was very bureaucratic and obliged small towns and villages to also reserve urban plots for new religious centres, without considering if they had the need for them or not.

However, there are Catalan towns with more than a 30% immigrant population, most of them having arrived in the last 10 years. In addition, in some neighbourhoods of towns such as in Salt, there have been social tensions among different communities; situations that marginal xenophobic parties such as Plataforma per Catalunya use as the perfect soil to dig their roots into and get a few seats in some town halls.

The Catalan Government's new approach to the Worship Centres Law gives autonomy to local governments to decide. One of the Government’s reasons is that town halls can better adapt to the local needs. However, members from minority religions fear that they will no longer have guaranteed an accessible and affordable plot of land to build their religious centre, according to the aesthetics they like.

Despite the law's modification, some town halls such as Figueres' -which is also run by CiU- have announced their will to reserve plots of land for new religious centres. Furthermore, in the case of Figueres, its Mayor Santi Vila is planning a project where different worship centres from different religions will share a same square, showing that they can all live together.