Abstract
This article analyzes the development and framing of Catalonia’s “Law on Centers of Worship”, an innovative law dedicated exclusively to the regulation of religious temples that was passed by the regional Parliament in 2009. The law was a legal novelty in Spain, as well as in Europe, where regulations pertaining to places of worship are typically folded into regional or municipal laws and ordinances dealing with zoning and construction. My analysis highlights how the law aimed not only to address the challenges generated by the proliferation of places of worship serving religious minorities, but also to legally reinforce and symbolically affirm Catalonia’s political autonomy and cultural distinctiveness vis-à-vis Spain. I place particular emphasis on how the temporal confluence of heightened nationalist mobilization, on the one hand, and tensions surrounding ethno-religious diversification, on the other, contributed to the development of a legal innovation that integrated the governance of religious diversity within the broader nation-building project. This article’s findings illustrate the role of historical timing and conjunctural causality in shaping the dynamic nexus between religion, law, and politics.
Highlights
In 2009, Catalonia’s Parliament enacted a “Law on Centers of Worship” (LCW)
The enactment of the LCW, as well as the intensity of the criticisms leveled by Catholic leaders and conservative political elites, raise several questions: Why did Catalan legislators elect to chart a new path for religious governance by developing the LCW instead of following the example of other European regions by adding articles or clauses on religious gathering and worship to existing zoning and building regulations? Why did the law elicit such strong criticism despite the unlikelihood of it having any tangible, let alone pernicious, consequences for actual Catholic churches? Answering these questions requires an analysis of the dynamic nexus between religion, law, and politics in Catalonia
Over the course of this article, I have highlighted the importance of historical timing and conjunctural causality for explaining the decision of Catalan policymakers to pursue a legally innovative solution to regulating places of worship that broke with standard
Summary
In 2009, Catalonia’s Parliament enacted a “Law on Centers of Worship” (LCW). This was the first law dedicated exclusively to the regulation of places of religious gathering in. In Catalonia, for example, challenges related to religious diversity have served as an impetus for the development of governmental agencies, normative frameworks, and legal initiatives that bolster the region’s autonomy and claims to distinctiveness vis-à-vis Spain (Astor 2014, 2020; Burchardt 2020; Griera 2016). Rather than considering Catalan nationalism as a more or less constant force that contributes to particular discourses and laws pertaining to religious governance, I examine the dynamic and contingent relation between nationalist mobilization and ethnoreligious diversification in Catalonia. I argue that the temporal confluence of conflicts related to ethno-religious diversification, most notably local controversies over the establishment of mosques, on the one hand, and heightened nationalist mobilization, on the other, contributed to the development of the LCW as a legal innovation that integrated the governance of religious diversity within Catalonia’s broader nation-building project.
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