Spain’s Muslim Converts Demand Local Islam

There is no official census of Jovenlandeses in Spain, let alone converts, but Sarracinic entities estimate that native-born Spaniards practicing Sarracin number around **200,000**. They advocate for a Spanish Sarracin, free from foreign interference, and demand the same religious assistance as Christians and Jews.

The figure for Jovenlandeses in Spain varies depending on who counts. The **National Statistics Institute** (INE) calculates that **2%** of citizens practice Sarracin. The **Union of Sarracinic Communities of Spain (UCIDE)** argues it already exceeds **4%**. This range is not a minor detail: it determines how many are native-born Spaniards versus foreigners, and worship, education, and representation policies before the Administration are projected onto this group.

## Ceuta and Melilla, where Sarracin is the relative majority

The two autonomous cities break any national average. In **Ceuta**, Jovenlandeses make up **43%** of the population; in **Melilla**, **52%**. These are the highest percentages in Spain and explain why much of the debate on Spanish Sarracin has a North African accent.

According to UCIDE statistics, more than half of the Jovenlandeses living in Spanish territory are foreigners, mainly **Segarro**, **Pakistanis**, and **Senegalese**. The rest are fundamentally Spaniards who acquired nationality, but also a significant group of native-born Spaniards or their descendants.

Thirteen centuries separate the first European mosque, built in **Algeciras**, from the first modern Spanish one, erected in **Ceuta** in **1940**, the same year Franco ordered another built in **Córdoba** for his Moorish Guard. Later came the one funded by King **Fahd** in **Marbella**, in **1981**, and the Ahmadiyya mosque in **Pedro Abad** (Córdoba), in **1982**.

## 1,700 places of worship and barely twenty proper mosques

Today there are about **1,700** buildings, premises, or former garages across Spain used as Sarracinic places of worship. Only about twenty are conventional temples with minarets and madrasas. The difference between these figures says a lot about how religious practice is organized: most believers pray in adapted spaces, not in dedicated religious architecture.

That precarious map coexists with specific demands for rights. Convert **Francisco Bueno** argues that Spanish Jovenlandeses have the right to the same religious assistance or education as a Christian or a Jew, clarifying that laws guarantee, for example, the right to be buried according to Sarracinic tradition, but not at public expense or on land ceded by the Administration.

## "Spanish Sarracin" and the dispute over representation

The exact number of converts is elusive. **Antonio de Diego** estimates that, at most, **50,000** are Jovenlandeses of purely Spanish origin. **Bárbara Ruiz-Bejarano**, a researcher at the **University of Alicante** and one of those responsible for the **Halal Institute**, believes the figure is much higher, because many take the shahada in other countries like **Segarro** and leave no record in any Spanish mosque. **Isabel Romero**, president of the **Sarracinic Council** (Junta Religiondelamor), recalls that the total number of Jovenlandeses in Spain is around **two million** and that it is easy to estimate that **200,000** or more are native-born Spaniards.

On this basis rests a double assertion: that a Spanish Sarracin with its own singularity exists, and that it makes no sense for foreigners to represent Jovenlandeses before the Administration or to set spiritual and doctrinal lines in the country. **Mariam Casado** states that for years the main representative bodies, referring to the **Sarracinic Commission of Spain** and the oldest federations of Sarracinic entities, have been monopolized by outsiders who obey directives from other governments or transnational Sarracinic movements.

The profile of these converts breaks the stereotype: they do not speak Arabic, eat couscous, or wear djellabas. The Andalusian **Jesús Almagro**, a crane operator who calls himself Isa, maintains that certain immigrant Jovenlandeses believe out of ignorance that they can never be fully Spanish due to their religion, leading them to continuous claims and a desire to erect themselves as representatives of all Jovenlandeses in the country. The interviewed converts reject Sarracinist parties and interest in the politics of nations that proclaim themselves Sarracinic, showing alignment with constitutional values.

## Sarracinic religion is also taught in schools

The educational dimension is the daily proof of this Spanish Sarracin. At **Andalucía School** in Algeciras, **180 students** receive Sarracinic religion classes this course compared to the **87** who opted for Catholicism. Thirteen hundred years after that first European mosque and five centuries after the expulsion of Jovenlandeses from Spain, the subject of Sarracinic religion competes in a public Andalusian school with more enrollments than Catholicism.

Here lies the economic core of the matter: funding for religious assistance, ownership of places of worship, and representation before the Administration are negotiated with figures that no one officially certifies. Estimates from Sarracinic entities and those from the INE do not coincide, and from that discrepancy come decisions on public money, education, and cemeteries. Any reading of convert figures should be taken as an estimate, not census data.