Review \"Religiones en España: Historia y presente. Madrid: Akal, 2012.319 pp. ISBN (F. Diez de Velasco)

BOOK REVIEWS

Francisco Diez de Velasco Religiones en España: Historia y presente. 9788446030140

Madrid: Akal, 2012.319 pp. ISBN

(hbk.)

Following his wide-reaching production of literature on methodology, theory and the history of religion,1 Francisco Diez de Velasco, professor of ancient his­ tory at the University of La Laguna (Tenerife), has now published a synthesis of Religions in Spain, from the perspectives of history and sociology. The book gives a history of religions from prehistory to the present day, focusing on the evolution of the three historical religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and a sociological study of the new forms of religiousness in modern Spain. The author is concerned by the "visibility " of religious plurality (p. 7), which is the point of view articulating his discourse and which makes it original, dis­ tancing it from traditional approaches to the study of religion in Spain, which usually concentrate on Catholicism. For Diez de Velasco, none of the religions in Spain should be vindicated as autochthonous or exclusive. For this reason, he ehose the title Religiones en España (Religions in Spain) instead of Religiones de España (Religions of Spain), highlighting the processes of change over the millennia in which a plurality of religions has co-existed (or as he says, "eked out an existence," p. 8) and left its mark in literature, art, and the landscape. Chapter 1 ("First Inhabitants and First Beliefs: The Mosaic of Ancient Spanish Religions," pp. 29-55) is an updated summary of the oldest religions in Spain, from prehistory to the Roman age. As in other ancient Mediterranean societies in antiquity, the Iberian Península was characterized by a mosaic of local and imported religious beliefs and practices (Celtic, Iberian, Phoenician, Punic, Greek, and Roman), which have bequeathed an enormous quantity of archae­ ological remains of extraordinary quality and beauty, which are documented in this book with numerous illustrations. Diez de Velasco, in his concern with visibility, concludes that "objects of a religious character ... tend to make for­ eign items visible to a greater extent .. . as they come from societies which at that time had writing and, therefore, a more detailed memory than what can be reconstructed through silent material culture alone" (p. 39). He also introduces the concepts of "center" and "periphery" in his analysis although these are little used in traditional historiography about ancient religions. Cities control peripheral territories over which they exercise an attraction, not only t

Other titles by the author are Los caminos de la muerte (1995): Lenguajes de la religión (1998); (2000) ; Introducción a la Historia de las Religiones ( 2002 ); La historia de las religiones: Métodos y perspectivas (2005): Breve historia de las Religiones (2oo6); Budismo en España: Historia. visibilización e implantación ( 20 13) Las nuevas religiones

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in the political and economic spheres, but also in the cultural and religious realms. This model of an urban society advanced from the coast towards the hinterland and was disseminated with the Roman conquest The chapter ends with the impact of Rome in the Iberian Península and with the question: Did the first religious globalization take place then? He emphasizes Rome's active part in forming a religious koine through a double process of accumulation (evocatio) and integration (interpretatio). The spread of Christianity put an end (or attempted to put an end) to Hispanic polytheism, whose cults are now vin­ dicated by several groups of neo-pagans, above all in connection with Celtic religions and beliefs related to magic and witchcraft. Although it might be expected that the next chapter would be about the expansion of Christianity, Diez de Velasco, in his desire to deny Catholicism its status as the Spanish religion, goes on to study judaism, which from a chronological point of view must have reached the Iberian Península before Christianity. Thus, Chapter 2 studies "The Oldest Living Religion in Spain: History and Present of Sepharad" (pp. 57-87). Note that Diez de Velasco does not use the word judaism in the title, although the term often appears in the text, but Sepharad, the name given to Spain in Hebrew and which the jews used for the Iberian Península, possibly from the time of the Roman Empire, as they identified it with the Biblical Sepharad. jews are known to have been present in Spain from the second or third centuries c. E., although they may well have arrived before then. judaism, therefore, should not be considered a foreign religion, as it is usually perceived to be. After reviewing the documents attesting the presence of jews in ancient, Visigothic, and medieval Spain, and paying special attention to the architectonic remains of the jewish quarters and the synagogues that still survive (pp. 60-69), he examines the "enigma" of the persecutions that led to the massive expulsion and forced conversion of jews in the time of the Catholic Monarchs (from 1492 to 1498). He pauses to analyze sueh terms as "marrano"2 (pig) and "ladino"3 (cunning), which are still highly pejorative in Spanish today. He then analyzes the attitude of the Spanish government in the case of the persecution of the jews in Europe, from the late nineteenth century to the Second World War. A 1924 decree awarded Spanish nationality to the Sephardis who applied for it under certain conditions, but in practice this was hardly ever done; rather it was hampered by orders to the dip­ lomatic corps to hold up the process. The chapter finishes with a look at New Spanishjudaism. Since 198g,judaism has been recognized as a "deeply rooted" religion in Spain and since 1992 a law has regulated cooperation between the 2 3

A Sephardi converted by force.

lt refers to "Latin," the linguistic legacy: the old Castilian or judeo-Spanish language.

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Spanish State and jewish communities, according to whichjudaism receives similar treatment to that enjoyed by the Catholic Church. This is based on the historical weight ofjudaism rather than on the number of practitioners, as the ]ews form a very smaU community of about 40,ooo people in Spain, whereas there are about a million Muslims and evangelical Christians. Most of the approximately thirty synagogues in Spain are small and hold less than a hun­ dred people. jewish schools have existed since 1981, where the Jewish religion is taught instead of the traditional Catholic religion. Chapter 3 deals with "Hispanic Christianities and Imagining the Catholic Singularity" (pp. 8g-ng). Once again, Diez de Velasco chooses his words with care: "Christianities" instead of the usual "Christianity," according to a his­ toriographic movement that sees Christianity not as one religion, but as a group of them which are often struggling for preponderance over each other.4 Christianity has been historically, and is today, the most popular religion in Spain, the one that has shaped more than any other the organization of space, social life, and the "imaginary " (p. 8g) that have made it the religion of Spain. Diez de Velasco takes note of the discourse in traditional Hispanic historiog­ raphy (represented by the work of Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo), which in the majority-minority dichotomy only attends to the former. Here the emphasis is placed on diversity, from its origins to the conquest of America: the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire, Gothic Arianism, and Reccared's conver­ sion to Catholicism (ca. 587) which marked a point of no retum on the map of religions in the Iberian Península. He pays particular attention to the perse­ cution of heresy and the relationship between Christianity and minority reli­ gions like Islam andjudaism and the construction of the imaginary Hispanic Empire after the conquest of America. From here, Diez de Velasco looks back to study the presence of Islam in Spain, to which he devotes Chapter 4 ("The Mirror of Al-Andalus and the New Spanish Islam," pp. 12 1 -151). Together with a historical summary of the period (ca. 711-1492 ), the author stresses the singularity of Spanish Islam, connected to phenomena of colonization and de-colonization, the profound legacy that Islam left in Spain, from language and thought (sorne of the greatest thinkers in the Islamic world such as Averroes and Ibn Arabi were bom in Spain) to the rich architecture, sueh as the Mosque in Cordoba ( the capital of the Andalusian Caliphate) turned into a Catholic church and nowadays not available to Muslims for prayer, despite claims being made in this respect. The Cordoba Mosque is one of many examples of the Christianization of mosques in Spain. Diez de Velasco studies the vocabulary of Islamophobia, although he states 4

E.g., Ehrman 2003 and Piñero 2007.

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that in the case of Spain, rather than "Islamophobia" there is "Maurophobia," which is a phobia of the Moors, who are identified with fanaticism, barbarism, subjugation, and, ultimately, with poverty. The strong religious commitment of Muslim faithful, compared with the restricted religious practices of Catholics, means that they are seen as fanatics, and they tend to be made invisible, for example by hindering the construction of mosques. The bombings of n March 2004, which left scores of dead in Madrid, have hardened these feelings. One particularity of Spanish Islam is that it has the largest number of converted faithful in any European country. For many Spaniards, converting to Islam sig­ nifies a return to the faith of their ancestors. Since 1992, Islam, like ]udaism, maintains a cooperation agreement with the Spanish state, although Islam is rarely taught in schools, largely because of a lack of agreement among differ­ ent Muslim federations in the designation of teachers and the passivity of the Spanish state. There are now nearly a million Muslims in Spain, and they are becoming more and more visible: there are currently over a thousand mosques, sorne of them very large, like the mosques in Madrid and Malaga, paid for with funds from Arab countries. Chapter 5 ("From Singular to Plural: From Spanish National-Catholicism to Religions in Democracy," pp. 153- 17 1) studies the process of the transition from Catholic Spain to the religious diversity in democratic Spain. It analyzes the relationship between the concept of nation and Catholicism in nineteenth­ century legislation and the development of national-Catholicism stressing the collaboration of the Catholic Church with Franco's regime. This collaboration led to a total religious monopoly of the Catholic Church. The Second Vatican Council forced the regime to be more open in the sphere of religion, for example with the "Regulatory Law of the Civil Right to Freedom in Religious Matters" (1967), but this had no effect. Franco's death in 1975 triggered a process of change characterized by an increasing abandonment of religious practice among Catholics and the disaffection with rituals. The 1978 democratic consti­ tution, in its article 16, declares freedom of worship and the non-confessional nature of the state. This was developed further by the Organic Law of Religious Freedom in 1g8o. In parallel, divorce (1981) and abortion (1985) were legalized, and in 2010 the marriage of homosexuals was perrnitted. All these moves were strongly criticized by the Catholic Church. Chapter 6 studies "The Varieties of Modern Spanish Catholicism" (pp. 173207). Catholicism is still the most popular religion in Spain: between seventy and 75 percent of Spaniards are Catholics although barely five percent prac­ tice the religion actively. Catholicism is undoubtedly the most visible religion, omnipresent in the country with its architecture and its symbols. The Catholic Church has a vast heritage of property which it struggles to maintain: 23,000

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parishes, run by about 18,300 priests; sorne 6o,ooo places of worship; a thousand monasteries with about 12,ooo monks and over 300 women's congregations with nearly 62,ooo nuns.5 However, the falloff in vocations has been enormous in recent decades. At the present time there are less than 1,300 seminarians (compared with 1,900 a decade ago). Meanwhile, Catholic social action is still very important, as it sustains hospitals (nearly 200), shelters for the homeless (about soo), and old people's homes (about 1,ooo). The Spanish State maintains very solid agreements for cooperation with the Church as regards funding and education in state schools. The Church selects (and removes) the teachers of Catholic religion, who are paid by the state, and is exempt from the payment of taxes. However, Spanish Catholicism is very diverse; there are over 400 religious orders, sorne of which, like the jesuits, are important in the university sphere. Opus Dei has about 2,ooo priests and sorne 90,ooo members. The Legionnaires of Christ have certain support in Spain, as has the Neocatechumenal Way (popularly known in Spain as "kikos"). While these groups recruit their follow­ ers among the elite, others are more social in their character and critica! with the hierarchy, proximate to the theology of liberation, such as the Asociación de Teólogos y Teólogas Juan XXIII. Despite this plurality, the Catholic Church, which controls severa! forms of mass media (press and radio), is still influential in the socio-political sphere and continues to express its force in such matters as education, abortion, and marriage of homosexuals, which are again being debated in Spain with its current conservative govemment. Chapter 7 studies "The Weight of Unbelief in Post-religious Spain" (pp. 209239). The people who profess they are not religious and the atheists amount to twenty percent of the population and are the second largest religious group, if they can be called that. In Spain, there are hardly any groups fighting for a fully lay and neutral state, although historically there has been a strong anti-clerical feeling, which led to attacks on Catholic religious heritage on severa! occa­ sions in the history of Spain. Secularization is still a difficult process, even in the legal framework. The Church is still influential in the public sphere and in the decisions of the state. The fact that the subject of religious studies is little taught in Spanish schools and that no university departments or professor­ ships are dedicated to this subject is the result, and the proof, of this situation. Chapter 8 ("The New Plurality of Spanish Christianity," pp. 241-273) stud­ ies the diversity of Christianity in modem Spain. Today in Spain there are Evangelical Christians (with over 3,000 places of worship), Adventists, Mormons (with 120 centers), jehovah's Witnesses (with over 1,ooo groups) and Orthodox 5

Data from the statistics was produced by the Spanish Episcopal Conference, through its Church Statistics and Sociology Office

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Christians (especially Romanians, who are growing in numbers) . The "new Spanish Christianity," as the author calls it, receives its members from three sources (the converted, immigrants, and tourists), and all the communities are thriving. Among these, Evangelicals are the largest minority. Grouped since 1986 in the Spanish Federation of Evangelical Religious Entities ( FEREDE [its initials in Spanish]), it has achieved favorable treatment from the state. The final chapter ("The Multiplication of Minorities: Religion in the Shopping Mall," pp. 275-307) studies beliefs as objects of consumption and the increase in spiritualities. Buddhists (whose religion is recognized as having deep roots since 2007) and Hindus are loosely cohered groups for which little information is available but increasingly visible. Diez de Velasco, the author of a recent monograph on Buddhism in Spain (2013), supplies all the known data about this group (with about 6o,ooo practitioners and a total of about 30o,ooo sympathizers) and illustrates their centers in Spain with numerous photographs. Finally, new religions from North America have a small presence in Spain, like the Church of Scientology, which after a number of refusals and a court case achieved recognition as a religious entity in 2007. Diez de Velasco sums up (pp. 309-315) the current panorama of religions in Spain and their future perspectives with the following tendencies: ( 1 ) disaffec­ tion and massive abandonment of Catholic practices; (2) "re-enchantment," with the choice of new forms of religiousness, especially those coming from Asia; (3) multiplicity, with interest in religious practices from very distant places, like santería, candomblé, and voodooism; (4) an approach to equality in the treatment of different religions from the legal point of view; (5) individ­ ualization of religion, making it an intimate and personal experience; (6) yet, equally, an increase in collective aspects, the visibility of the multiple religious options in public places and their presence on social networks; and (7) multi­ religiousness as the dominant factor in the outlook for religions in the future. In addition to this exhaustive and novel analysis of the past and present of religions in Spain, Diez de Velasco's book provides a huge number of illustra­ tions, with all of the photographs taken by the author himself, who has visited the places of worship, watched the ceremonies and spoken to the participants. This is an erudite work, rich in its contents and accessible to educated, and not only academic, readers. As a historian, the author is aware of the variety of documents and the difficulty in interpreting them. Religions in Spain stands out because of its combination of historical and sociological methods, which makes this a unique work in the panorama of studies on religion in Spain. Mar Marcos Universidad de Cantabria

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References Diez de Velasco, Francisco. 1995. Los caminos de la muerte. Madrid: Trotta. ---. 1998. Lenguqjes de la religión. Madrid: Trotta. ---.2000. Las nuevas religiones. Madrid: Ediciones del Orto. ---. 2002. Introducción a la Historia de las Religiones, 3rd ed. Madrid: Trotta. ---. 2005. La historia de las religiones: Métodos y perspectivas. Madrid: Akal. ---.2006. Breve historia de las Religiones.

Madrid: Alianza.

---. 2013. Budismo en España: Historia, visibilización e implantación.

Madrid: Akal.

Ehrman, Bart. 2003. Lost Christianities: The Battlefor Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Piñero, Antonio. 2007. Los cristianismos derrotados. Madrid: Edaf.

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