Mosque on Fire: Spain's Immigration Boiling Point

Summer is the fiesta season in Spain. From the Feria del Norte in Santander in the north to the Veladas y Fiestas in La Linea de la Concepcion in the south, the country erupts with fireworks, encierros, bullfights, parades, concerts, and every other form of fiesta imaginable. Tourists from across the world flock to these fiestas to get just a glimpse of the famed Spanish parties while enjoying their Mediterranean beach vacations. It's summer, after all, a time for fun and relaxation.

It's also protest season, as any big-city dweller in the West well knows. Social and political issues boil over in the summer heat, and marches, demonstrations, and riots are common. Spain is no exception; indeed, many Spanish cities set the gold standard in political opposition. Who can forget the Catalonians throwing water in the face of foreign diners in Barcelona or naked bull runs in Pamplona? Protesting is a uniquely Western democratic right, and Spain exercises this right with pride and exceptionalism, if a bit overzealously at times.

But there is a fine line between political activism and political violence. All too often, well-intended protests, such as the Summer of Love protests in 2020 in the United States, turn violent, undermining their original message. This week, a mosque in Piera caught fire. Why? Great question, and one which the police are investigating, but they suspect arson. However, protests against unchecked illegal Muslim immigration into Spain from the Middle East and Africa have raged across the country, and it has been widely assumed that this fire was set by anti-immigration activists. So, what does setting a mosque alight have to do with migration? That's the question many across the world waking up to the news find themselves asking.

Spain, France, Italy, and even the United Kingdom (even though it departed the European Union) are suffering under the weight of illegal immigration from Muslim migrants. These immigrants come from across the Middle East and Africa, fleeing persecution (either real or perceived) and seeking a better life in Europe. That is an understandable sentiment, and the United States and Canada encounter the same type of migration. But Europe, especially Spain, isn't across an ocean from these hot-spots; it is just across the Mediterranean Sea, sometimes only a few miles through a maritime strait. As a result, illegal migrants arrive by the hundreds, sometimes thousands, on European shores without documentation, background and security checks, or money sufficient to sustain themselves and their families. All of this is a consequence of the EU's 2010s-era policies of open borders and humanitarian burden sharing spearheaded by Germany's Angela Merkel. Even though she is long gone from the German Chancellery and the EU Presidency, her legacy's impact remains powerful.

Spain in particular has a problematic history with Muslims crossing the Mediterranean that still influences political perceptions. Even though it has been over a thousand years since the Cordoban Emirate occupied the peninsula, the Reconquista remains fresh in the Spanish social psyche. Spain's golden age (both by Spain's own and international historians' definitions) started with the reclamation of the Iberian Peninsula from foreign powers, specifically the Muslims and the Jews, and the establishment of Catholicism as part of Spanish identity and rule in the Kingdoms of Castille and Aragon (who would later merge to form a unified Spain). Many today view the influx of unchecked, unknown Muslims into the country as travelling backwards in time and a threat to the Spanish identity the Spanish kingdoms fought so hard and so long to re-establish.

But does Spain hate Muslims? In my experience, no. Spaniards are much more opposed to American and French tourists taking up their beaches, driving up home prices, and weighing down the healthcare system than they are Muslims practicing Islam in their country. After all, the Spanish constitution guarantees freedom of religion, and the Spanish are very proud of their outwardly friendly reputation. At the same time, the Spanish are proud of being Spanish. National identity is a point of pride, and debates often rage over whether some custom or another is truly Spanish or if it is just something many Spaniards like. Indeed, the Catalan ban against bullfighting in 2012 had less to do with the bullfight and more to do with opposing Spanish identity in Catalonia.

That's where Spain's issue with this unchecked illegal immigration comes in to play. The Muslims who cross the sea to enter illegally often have no intention of becoming Spanish, just as American and British expats insist on living in their non-Spanish enclaves. The difference? These expats rarely make concerted efforts to fundamentally alter the political and social fabric. They live in apartments, they don't vote, they eat at Spanish restaurants, shop at Spanish supermarkets, wear socially-suitable clothing, and attend Spanish churches (if they attend church at all). Even if they don't assimilate, they at least integrate with their new homes (at least to a measurable degree).

The illegal Muslim immigrants, on the other hand, resist integration and assimilation, or at least that is what the public sees and believes when encountering them on the streets. They don't just keep their identity from their prior life; they seek to alter the identity of their chosen home. Walking through Madrid, you are just as likely to hear shop owners speaking Arabic as you are to hear them speaking Spanish. In Pamplona, especially during the Fiesta de San Fermin, illegal immigrants peddling their wares (which I can call "crap" without a problem) fill the main walkways, pestering locals and tourists alike, speaking Spanish to us but Arabic to each other. In Barcelona, La Rambla, once a famed tourism street, is now known for being an illegal immigrant pickpocket's fiefdom (and the Spanish are quick to warn you of going there out of security). The erecting of mosques and Islamic communities, especially in southern Spain, feels to many to be a re-establishment of a sustained Islamic presence and influence on Spanish territory. These mosques' separate entrances for men and women fly directly in the face of Spanish gender equality beliefs, yet another example of where identity practices diverge.

Of course, Spain today is not the Spain of the Francoist regime, which sought to impose a singular national identity on everyone in the country. To this end, Franco repressed and persecuted Basques, Galicians, and Catalans alike for practicing their languages and cultures (which had been around far longer than the unified Kingdoms of Castille and Aragon). While Spanish identity is strong and shared, it is not politically or legally mandated, nor should it be. Cultures evolve and mix together over time to form stronger bonds, community values, and shared history. The problem for many in Spain as it pertains to the illegal Muslim immigrants is that they have no intention of evolving or mixing with Spanish culture.

This problem is not isolated to Spain, as many other European countries face the same dilemma. While their national governments debate immigration issues in committees, individuals have started to take their own measures to fight against the perceived (and many would argue actual) invasion by illegal Muslim immigrants. In France, some women are adopting pet pigs to ward off Muslim men. In Italy, local police have increased document checks to wrest control of their cities back from illegal immigrants. In Germany, citizens living on the borders have begun patrolling the frontier to stop illegal immigrants from entering their towns and changing their cities. It's only a matter of time before national government inaction will beget citizens taking counter- and anti-immigration measures into their own hands outright.

Unfortunately for the Spanish government, there is little the country can do once the illegal Muslim immigrants land on Spanish shores. Even if Spain arrests or detains them, EU regulations require Spain to provide housing, food, and amenities to them at state expense while undertaking deportation proceedings. At the same time, EU regulations prohibit Spain from using jails or prisons for these illegal immigrants except in exceptional circumstances, and they are often placed into open holding centres or group homes (which the illegal immigrants can enter and leave at-will) with food, utilities, healthcare, and legal aid provided with state funds. More often than not, these proceedings either fail outright or take so long that they are de facto failures, leaving many Spaniards to wonder why it is they are paying taxes to give free room and board to illegal immigrants who have no intention of adapting to their chosen home.

And that's where the mosque from the beginning of this piece comes into play. While the police have not reported the official cause of the fire, it is widely believed (and accepted) that this was political violence perpetrated by "far-right" groups (I place "far-right" in quotations, because it is a label applied to anyone who wants to have a serious discussion about immigration rather than actual far-right actors). Whether or not it was an act of political violence is immaterial in this instance. That the illegal Muslim immigration problem is so widespread that a mosque on fire is assumed to be a political act demonstrates just how big of a social problem it really is. To be sure, political violence, especially arson against religious symbols that could both inflame tensions and kill innocent people, has no place in a modern democratic society. At the same time, however, neither does a government that refuses to listen to the concerns of its people or illegal immigrants flaunting the law and getting paid to do it.

The mosque in Piera has not been the only instance over the past week. Torre Pacheco has erupted with political violence after a 68-year-old man was savagely beaten on the street by actors whose language he didn't understand (as the man himself put it). The reprisals against immigrants, both legal and illegal, have sparked riots which have lasted for days as of this writing. These acts of violence, even if only perceived, begs the question: What is the government doing to listen to the people who have legitimate concerns about the illegal influx of Muslim immigrants into the country?

By this point, even the most casual reader will have noticed that I have consistently focused on three words: illegal, Muslim, immigrants. I love Spain, and I have considered emigrating to the country many times of the years. Legally. By coming through an immigration checkpoint with a passport, visa, proof of financial solvency, and a working knowledge of the Spanish language and culture. Legal immigrants are not the concern here. I have also not focused on Ukrainian refugees, many who whom were welcomed into the country when Russia initiated its "special operation" (what those of us in the real world call "war of aggression"). Nor do most Spanish, at least in my observation, focus on these categories. Legal immigrants have at least some level of commitment to Spanish life, and Ukrainian refugees will eventually return home (if they don't legally emigrate to Spain and remain). The illegal Muslim immigrants have no such commitments or intentions. They ignore the laws to enter Spain, ignore the culture once they do, and fail to acknowledge Spain's complicated history with Muslim incursions on the continent. So, they are a distinct category of "outsider" in Spain, one which is met with increasing intolerance not just by the so-called "far-right," but everyday people.

So here are the questions at hand: When will enough be enough? What will it take for the government to proactively combat this issue? When will the Spanish government join countries like Poland in fighting back against EU regulations supported by countries like Germany who do not have to face this issue head-on? Will it take a fundamental cultural shift where showcasing ham hocks at a shop becomes illegal because the illegal Muslim immigrants are offended? Will it take a terrorist attack by an organisation exploiting this grave weakness in Spanish security? Or will it take more mosques burning and unmitigated, unsubstantiated political reprisals by citizens who have had enough?

More politically, when will voicing concerns about unchecked illegal Muslim immigration to Spain cease to be viewed as a "far-right" issue by national and regional governments and their urban left supporters? The European experience of the past five years tells us that the longer those concerned about immigration are labelled as "far-right" and ignored, the more substantial the eventual backlash is once people with those concerns are finally elected. If Spain continues to refuse to acknowledge the concerns of a growing number of its people, is its population willing to tolerate the eventual illegal immigration crackdown and mass deportations (similar to what the United States has seen under the second Trump administration)?

I, for one, am wholly opposed to political violence, but I am also opposed to governments creating special categories of persons who don't have to abide by the laws created by the people and for the people. I can't help but wonder why it is becoming increasingly difficult for me as an American to legally emigrate to Spain when I visit the ferias, fiestas, and cities while speaking Spanish every year, yet those who simply ignore the laws I am trying to follow get government-subsidised housing and sustenance. I'm not alone. A great many Spanish feel the same way. I can only hope that it won't come to the worst-case scenario: loss of culture, loss of confidence in government, and loss of life.