Moors and Christians: Fear of Islam in Spanish Political Debates

Abstract

This chapter examines the 2010 Spanish Senate debate on a motion urging legislation to ban Islamic women’s face-veils. It examines committee and plenary debates in the Catalan Parliament 2011–2013 in connection with motions and bills to the same end. The political discourse is characterised by arguments referring to various rights, including that of personal and collective safety, posited as central in the ongoing construction of national or Catalan identity and which are, it is argued, being contravened and even threatened by the presence of the burqa in Spain. This chapter also discusses the contrasting judgement of Spain’s highest appeal court, which in 2013 quashed a by-law passed by the City of Lleida in Catalonia banning in all public places any garment covering the face. The decision gave constitutional protection to Muslim women wearing the face-veil in the whole of Spain, however, even after the decision, politicians at both the national and Catalan levels continued, and continue still, to seek ways to achieve their end of prohibiting this symbolic garment.