Berkley Center

Writing this second letter has proved quite difficult for me, which surprised me—I never thought writing about religion in Spain would be a difficult topic. It’s a Roman Catholic country, rich in religious history as a result of the heavy influences of the Moorish and Jewish peoples living in the south of Spain in past centuries combined with the ever-present Catholic influences of the various Spanish monarchs—how hard could it be to find something to say? However, after living here for six months, I have only found myself thoroughly confused by the religious lives of the Spanish people. In my last letter, I talked about the absence of true religion—that religion was more of a classification or an excuse for a celebration rather than a way of life or a belief system. I continue to stand by these views, and yet at the same time, I’m coming to believe that the Spanish are so Catholic that they are ignorant when it comes to the rest of the world. That obviously needs explanation—how can a people be both not enough and too much of something at the same time? Answer: I’m not sure, hence my confusion and difficulty with this letter. However, I’ll do my best in the next few paragraphs to try to explain what I’ve seen and draw some conclusions.

While Spaniards do not generally attend Mass or practice Catholicism in any regular way, they do still associate themselves with the Catholic religion. The adults remember growing up under Franco, attending Catholic schools, and learning Catholic doctrine, but no longer practice any religion because they are no longer forced to. Many Spanish children do not attend Catholic schools anymore, but they have a strong interest in religion—maybe due to the lack of its presence. They get extremely excited about going to Mass (I remember as children, my friends and I would complain on Monday mornings about being dragged to Mass on Sunday), and they participate actively (the kids at my school who were allowed to bring books to Mass were considered incredibly lucky), so while religion is not a central part of life, it is present in a peripheral way.

In addition, the religion that is present is noticeably Catholic. The adults were raised under Franco—meaning that their only religious background has been completely Catholic. The children do not receive much religious education at all, but what they do learn is from their Catechism classes, thus completely Catholic as well. Studies of various religions are not done in school, and knowledge of other religions is limited. While sitting at lunch one day, after Buddhism was mentioned in an episode of The Simpsons, my 9 year-old host sister asked her mother if the Chinese were Buddhist. My host mom responded, “No, sweetie, the Hindus are Buddhist.” Being close to my host family, I felt comfortable clarifying that Hinduism is a religion prevalent in India, and that yes, Buddhism is a religion prevalent in China. 

With those two clarifications, I was declared quite knowledgeable regarding religion and was asked to explain a little bit about each of the religions of the world, or at least direct my host mom to a webpage with a brief synopsis of every religion. That question (combined with other similar comments from various people) has opened my eyes as to how little the Spanish know about religion. Imagine a webpage that listed every religion in the world. Also, while I would consider myself knowledgeable about Catholicism, and I could talk about various Protestant beliefs and Judaism, and could even briefly discuss the basic tenets of Islam, I’m not knowledgeable about “religion.” While I know that Hinduism is dominant in India, and I think there might possibly be something about cows somewhere in the religion, and I know that when a Buddhist talks about Nirvana, he’s not referring to Kurt Cobain, that pretty much covers my knowledge on those issues (Sorry to anyone I might have offended with those comments—my intent was not to offend, but rather show my complete lack of knowledge on these issues). I’m clearly not an expert, and yet to the Spanish I appear quite informed. The little information I could offer was worlds more information than they had ever been given in their strictly Catholic upbringings.

Therefore, based on my encounters, I guess I would have to conclude that Spain is not a religious country in practice, but that it is Catholic in terms of education. While Catholicism does not play an active role in life, it is a crucial part of the foundation. The Catholic faith is a part of the nation’s identity, if not its lifestyle, thus making it a both sacred and secular country.