'Negative, undesirable, dangerous': Why are Islamophobic speeches recurring in Spain's elections?

“Take care of what is yours”. That is the provocative slogan having been used by the far-right Spanish party Vox to kickstart the election year, in which Spain has elected mayoralties and some regional governments during the first round of May 28, and in which it will elect the parliament and the government’s president on July 23.

During the last general elections in 2019, the same political party started its campaign in the city of Covandonga — the alleged cradle of the ‘Reconquista’ — with the general theme of making their political project the vanguard of a new Reconquista: which would fight the dangers of what they call ‘the increasing Islamisation of Spain’.

"The logic of parties such as Vox is to identify a part of society and try to label and categorise it as negative, as undesirable, as dangerous"

Since that electoral campaign, Islamophobic speeches have been recurrent in the Spanish political climate, each time worse.

In 2021, during the event of regional elections in Catalonia, the right-wing group released a video showcasing images of mosques and of people learning Arabic alongside images of the 2017 terrorist attacks in Barcelona.

Civil society organisations took the video to the prosecutor’s office for spreading hate speech, but the case was archived.

This year too, during the first round of elections, the party decided to continue using the same strategy. As part of its political propaganda through the metro lines of Madrid, it fabricated a poster with a list of Arab names allegedly corresponding to the list of beneficiaries of state benefits, and asked Spanish people: “Where is your name?”

For former members of the platform against Islamophobic phenomena in Catalonia (SAFI) Mustafa Aoulad Sellam, the emergence of these speeches is not surprising. “The logic of parties such as Vox is to identify a part of society and try to label and categorise it as negative, as undesirable, as dangerous," he explained.

For him, what is surprising and concerning is to see how these speeches are banalised by public institutions and other political parties.

What is more, these speeches are concerning because they normalise the falsification of Spanish history, and replace it with an artificial narrative that is not true.

What is "ours"? “Those Grenadians were as Spanish as you and me”

Slogans such as this election's “Take care of what is yours” go in line with a series of other discourses trying to convey the idea that, since the arrival of Tariq ibn Zyad to the shores of today’s Gibraltar in 711, the Northern Catholic Iberians have been trying to reclaim what was ‘theirs’.

"If current Islamophobic speeches are able to become popular among the population it is because there has been, for centuries, a narration of history that labelled Muslims as ‘strangers’ and ‘invaders’ when they actually were not"

Aicha Fernández is an archaeologist and a communicator on Islamic history, and she encourages Spanish people to question: “When allusion is made to the taking of Granada in 1492 with this patriotic pride in expelling the Muslims and recovering what is "ours", what are we talking about? Those Grenadians were as Spanish as you and me.”

Aicha points out here a decisive element. If current Islamophobic speeches are able to become popular among the population it is because there has been, for centuries, a narration of history that labelled Muslims as ‘strangers’ and ‘invaders’ when they actually were not.

Prominent historian of medieval history José Luis Corral tells The New Arab that, according to the new ADN studies, “the immense majority of the population during the Al-Andalus era were Hispanic, not Arab. This leads the historian to think that there was not a process of great demographic invasions in the Iberian Peninsula, but a process of acculturation of the late Roman Visigothic society towards Islamic culture.

“There was an Islamisation of peninsular populations, not an invasion.”

Reconquista and the building of an identity

If terms such as invasion or the idea that foreign people occupied the Peninsula during the eighth century of the Islamic era in Spain are historically inaccurate, so is the concept of “Reconquista” or “Re-conquest”.

“To speak of reconquest, there had to have been a previous conquest, and in the case of Spain, national unity was not formed until 1520 after the wars with Navarre,” says Aicha.

Indeed, before the appearance of the Ummayad Empire in the Peninsula, those holding power over the area were the Visigoths, a Germanic people that ruled the territory from 418CE after having disputed the land with other the old Roman administration and other Germanic tribes.

Therefore, a pre-existing national unity and identity were never threatened by the Muslim conquest, simply because there were none. “Neither Isabella nor Ferdinand dreamed of ‘old Spain’, but of a new Spain that had not existed before. That was their ambition, to build an unprecedented territorial, religious, political and patrimonial legacy,” she continues.

As a matter of fact, the term ‘Reconquista’ did not appear in the Spanish historiography until the 18th and 19th centuries, says Professor José Luis Corral.

"In the middle of the 19th century, there was a period in which the Spanish state tried to create a national historiographical scenario to overcome problems such as the wars of independence or the Carlist Wars, and this idea of the Spanish nation was mythologised with the so-called ‘Re-conquest’[...] But this was obviously a mistake because nothing was reconquered, it was simply conquered," Professor Corral explains.

And this conquest was not a simple conquest, but one that lasted around eight centuries, with a legacy that remained in Spain to our day.

A neglected and denied heritage

According to Spanish philologist Rafael Lapesa, at least 4,000 words in the Spanish vocabulary would come directly from the Arabic language. But apart from language, examples of Muslim influence in the Spanish social and cultural landscape are vast.

From physical proof through the famous ‘andalusí’ architecture to culinary practices and the adoption of an engrained spiritual mindset derived from concepts such as ‘law sha’a Allah’, ‘ojalá’, and ‘if God wanted’; amongst many others.

For Taha Zitan, a Spanish university student of Moroccan parents, “It is a pity that the Muslim era is neglected and demonised when it should be considered one of the most prosperous periods and key in the construction of the Spanish identity.”

"Apart from language, examples of Muslim influence in the Spanish social and cultural landscape are vast"

As Taha says, many of the advancements and legacies introduced during the Muslim era are ignored. But there is also another phenomenon, acknowledging their value while negating their historical context.

For archaeologist and communicator Aicha Fernández, ‘Mudéjar’ art is an example, amongst many others, of this negation. “Today, the term is still used as an alternative to Islamic art, when the latter would be a more appropriate term.”

She argues that refusing to use the term ‘Islamic’ to name a source of Spanish pride has to do with maintaining the Catholic Kings’ conception of Spain as the ‘Catholic, Apostolic and Roman’ nation.

Mustafa Aoulad Sellam also maintains that this urge to negate anything that Spain owes to the Muslim era was accentuated by the rising intention of the Spanish population to look ‘more European’.

The phrase “Africa begins at the Pyrenees” is symbolic of how some European scholars perceived Spain as being part of what they considered to be the ‘uncivilised world.’

“Therefore,” Mustafa claims, “everything that is linked to the Islamic world must be denied to show that we are not like 'those below’, but that we are like 'those above'.”

Education and research at the service of the Church

These conflicted identity dynamics are at the core of why Islamophobic and historically inaccurate discourses coming from right-wing parties such as Vox have it so easy to appeal to and convince a big part of the Spanish masses during elections and in general.

But more significantly than a fragile identity, what is to blame for the perpetuation of these narratives is a political establishment that, alongside the tentacles of the Catholic Church, continues to manipulate education and the production of research.

Not only are terms such as ‘Reconquista’ or ‘Muslim invasion’ — acknowledged to be historically inaccurate by the majority of historians — still present in textbooks: but what is worse, attempts by the academic community to change this are silenced.

José Luis Corral confesses that whenever he has tried to assemble his colleagues to bring a campaign forward in order to change the situation, he would find “a dangerous void.”

"You have to be brave to give up research projects, to give up your salary, to give up your benefits by criticising and denouncing these issues"

He explains that public universities’ research funds are provided by the state and that in many instances, these would be provided to promote nationalism and manipulate the history of Islam.

“You have to be brave to give up research projects, to give up your salary, to give up your benefits by criticising and denouncing these issues; only three or four of us do it, probably because we might be quite foolish.”

'Any small problem or incident will be used against the Muslim community'

With an education framework that perpetuates an intentionally twisted historical narrative, political parties such as Vox have almost all the work done, and the success of hate speeches targeting a specific population is rendered easier than ever.

Mustafa Aoulad Sellam, who followed the last elections as part of the platform monitoring Islamophobia at the time, claims that after the apparition of these political movements reclaiming the ‘Re-conquest’ of ‘Christian Spain’, there has clearly been an increase of racist and Islamophobic attacks.

Although he recognises not having witnessed any attack so far, two anti-Islamophobia activists were deported to Morocco at the end of last year for alleged incitement to radicalism, and some parties have started using the case to push for measures like the immediate closure of mosques “promoting jihadism.”

Besides, Mustafa claims, the electoral year is still long and that “any small problem or incident will be used against the Muslim community.”

Bianca Carrera is a freelance writer and analyst having specialised in Middle Eastern and North African politics and society at Sciences Po Paris. She has written for Al Jazeera, The New Arab, Al-Quds Al-Araby, EU Observer and others. She is based between Spain, Morocco and Egypt

Follow her on Twitter: @biancacarrera25