They do not run good times for the Catholic Church, which dealt with a Vocations collapse and one clear loss of practitioners. However, others that are going better. As the Latin American community has gained presence In the Madrid region it has also been done by the Evangelical Church, increasingly present in its streets and with greater influence. Both, in fact, that there are those who calculate that they are opening places of worship to A past speed.
Your data are of course amazing.
What’s happening? That evangelical faith is extending strongly in Spain. And specially for the Community of Madrid, where he has been experiencing a real boom for years that can easily be traced in two areas: hemeroteca, who have been echoing of the trend; And on the streets (and polygons) of certain districts, which have seen how apartments, commercial bass or even old industrial workshops and ships were reconverted in places of worship.
Are there data to try it? Yes. The observatory of religious pluralism in Spain leaves two interesting. The first is that, according to the registration available right now on its website, in the Community of Madrid there are 834 places dedicated to evangelical cult. The second is that, with that figure, the evangelists are (from afar) the minority confession with more presence in the region. They monopolize more than 69% of the totalquite above the Muslim, which barely reaches 12%.
The Observatory itself points out that its data starts from a directory of places of worship that was last updated in October 2021. To have a more complete photograph it arrives with a look at the local press. In August The newspaper dedicated A wide report to the expansion of the evangelical temples in Madrid that spoke of the religion also passed the 800 centers of worship, which even exceeds the number of Catholic parishes, 702.
How does it expand? At a surprising speed. Especially if we take into account that it coincides with a moment of weakness of the Catholic Church, marked by A serious vocations crisis that has forced him to pull imagination to maintain temples operations located in the rural. According to The data published yesterday by The countryover the last five years the Madrid region has seen how places of evangelist worship opened at a record rate: one every four days.
The proliferation of this kind of temples is not in any exclusive case of the capital. The Observatory reveals that there are also hundreds and hundreds distributed throughout the rest of the country, especially in Catalonia, Andalusia and the Valencian Community. The Board of Directors of the Agency He attributes themrespectively, 984 and 731 and 495. In all Spain Newtral calculates 4,653 distributed for just over 800 municipalities.
What reveals Madrid? Several things. Especially the force with which the cult expands and where it does. Although the number of temples has grown clearly in the region, it has not done so homogeneously. While the most central district brings together 21 temples, in Carabanchel we find almost 90, which has made some practitioners refer to it as the “evangelical gold mile.”
The Observatory Board of religious pluralism shows that confession also has A rather relevant community Distributed by Alcalá de Henares, Móstoles, Fuenlabrada, Parla, Torrejón de Ardoz, Leganés or Getafe. Any of these locations has dozens of points of worship.
What is the reason? There is not one. But the phenomenon coincides with another clear trend: the increase in the population of Latin American origin in Madrid. Last year the region lived a historical milestone when overcoming the symbolic barrier of the Million residents born in Spanish -speaking countries.
The data is relevant because it confirms the exponential increase that the community has experienced in recent years, after successive migratory waves. As a reference, at the beginning of this century they barely went from 81,500. Beyond its evolution, it imports (and much) the weight that Americans have reached within Madrid’s society, already representing one in seven population.
Why is it important? Because although Catholicism still has a key weight in Latin America, Protestantism and more specifically evangelism (and the Pentecostal movement) movement) has gained strength On the other side of the Atlantic. Upon arriving in Spain, immigrants not only retain the faith they professed in their countries, but helps them preserve their identity and establish ties.
“They bring practices, leaders and networks already consolidated in origin that are reproduced in neighborhoods and municipalities where they settle, and find in the Pentecostal churches a space to maintain the identity community,” reflects the sociologist Paola García in A study On the phenomenon published in 2010. Religion abounds, allows them to “maintain identity continuity and, at the same time, mitigate the loneliness and vulnerability of the migratory process.”
Are they just temples? No. They are anchor points. And its function goes beyond religious celebrations. They also serve as a space for socialization and support, which partly explains how temples They have expandedoccupying low, old workshops and even ships that come to rent by thousands of euros.
“It is a form of social reconstruction that explains why Pentecostalism has found in Latin American flows a conducive land to grow,” he abounds. In Spain they live 1.5 million of people who declare themselves evangelists: to represent 0.2% of the population in 98 became 2% in 2018.
Is there anything more than religion? Yes. Although the places of worship have a valuable social function and it is not an exclusive problem of evangelism, there are those who question the approach of some congregations from Latin America that are implanted in Europe. “It is difficult to know when we are talking about an evangelical church and when of a sect”, duck Luis Santamaría del Río, Ries expert, in an essay on the matter published in 2023 cited by The country.
The researcher remember that in Spain the groups meet the same population as on the other side of the Atlantic, but “with a different purchasing power.” Specifically, it points to questionable practices, such as staging that can be interpreted as a “very subtle marketing operation” or even the creation of “dependent people” that allow among other things to improve collections. “There is clearly a business, not everything is a matter of faith,”
Images | Wikipedia (RayTTC) (The photo is taken in Cancun) and (Time2)
Via | The country
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