MADRID CENTRAL MOSQUE (courtesey of Wikipedia)
I could not resist passing on a fascinating article that was drawn to my attention by Andrew Linn. The Moors in Spain, so it seems, are returning to Spain in force!
Well, not in force, perhaps, but they are certainly making their presence known – and in one of the most the most controversial ways possible. Have a look at ‘Spain goes on mosque building spree’ and you will see that Islam is starting to exert some very obvious ‘muscle’ in Spain through their building of mosques and some pretty huge ones at that.
I suspect that any overt Islamic presence in Spain will not be welcomed in Spain by the general populace. Whilst the Spanish are normally very tolerant the ‘reconquista’ goes deep and they are nothing if not secular in nature. Indeed, Spain mimics the UK for its irreligiosity with the church going population very small indeed (contrary to popular myth).
Certainly, the Spaniards I know tend to loath the lack of obvious integration of some Islamic people when they continue, for example, to adhere to their very particular dress code. This is not the most subtle way of merging gently within a European country, any more than is their building of vast mosques.
Of course, Spain has seen a massive number of immigrants enter the country over the past ten years. Some of the immigrants (like myself) have come from Northern Europe but by far the greatest number have come from outside the ‘old’ EU states. By this I mean that considerable immigration in Spain has come from the new EU states such as Romania and Bulgaria – together with vast numbers from Latin America and the sub-Saharan states of Africa.
Most of the immigrants came during Spain’s recent lunatic building boom when there was, at least in theory, almost limitless work. Indeed, it is doubtful whether Spain could have possibly built so much without vast quantities of new, cheap labour. As such, the immigrants were welcomed and their presence allowed the Spanish to release themselves from the hardest types of work – to make easier money elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the Spanish government has known for a very long time that the ageing and ‘dying’ Spanish population needs new blood – if it is to have any hope of covering pension and national welfare costs in the near future. As a consequence, mass immigration has long been ‘national’ policy, albeit one not obvious to the Spanish population as a whole.
In any event, as I have written elsewhere, immigration in Spain is nothing if not The Big Issue in Spain and contentious. Indeed, with the ‘crisis’ and the current very high level of unemployment in Spain, I can only see it becoming a greater problem – and one that could all too easily sap the normal easy toleration of the Spanish.
RELEVANT INFO: Spain goes on mosque building spree and What did the Moors do for us? and The Big Issue