The lingering influence of Catholicism in increasingly secular Spain

DESPITE PANDEMIC restrictions and damp weather, on Good Friday evening several hundred people queued to enter the Basilica of Jesús de Medinaceli in the centre of Madrid to pay their respects to a 17th-century image of Christ. Most of the worshippers were over 40, but there were some younger couples. The Christ of Medinaceli is “very important for ”, said Magdalena, a regular worshipper. She added: “They say Spain is not a Catholic country any more, but it’s a lie.”Certainly it is a paradox. In the past four decades of democracy Spain has become a secular society with astonishing speed, perhaps faster than anywhere else in Europe. But the Roman Catholic Church retains considerable influence in some areas of national life. In fact, that is unsurprising. In no country in Europe was the church as powerful for many centuries as it was in Spain. Its power provoked militant anti-clericalism in a cultural conflict that was one of the roots of the Spanish civil war. Not coincidentally, the dictatorship of Francisco Franco embraced “national Catholicism” as its official ideology. But after the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65, sections of the church began to oppose the dictatorship. Agreements linked to the constitution of 1978 separated church and state, but acknowledged Spaniards’ religious faith.