Barcelona bans burqa and niqab

Tuesday, 15 June 2010 14:34

Barcelona has become the first major city in Spain to forbid face veils in municipal buildings, including public markets, schools, hospitals and libraries. The ban will come into effect later this year.

Two other municipalities in the north-eastern Catalonia region, Lleida and El Vendrell, have already announced plans to ban the burqa and niqab. An additional seven municipalities are considering similar proposals.

The veil has become subject of intense debate in Spain and across Europe, most notably in the Netherlands, France, Italy and Belgium.

In spite of the fear mongering that governed the debate, one commentator, Gemma Galdon Clavell, notes that the new ban will 'affect a total of six people (that's how many women are thought to wear the burqa in Catalunya).'

Clavell continues:

'What I find worrying though, and worth reflecting upon, is how the same three towns that have led the way with this ban (Lleida, El Vendrell, Barcelona) also happen to be pioneers in passing ordinances to regulate civility and public space and installing closed-circuit television systems in public space.

'Barcelona was the first to pass a civility ordinance in the Catalan context, mixing in the same text and establishing fines for things as different as prostitution, street vending, begging, playing and peeing in the street. Lleida passed a similar text in 2007, and is the only city which has been forced to modify it by the Supreme Court. El Vendrell, on the other hand, has the greatest amount of square meters surveilled by CCTV in relation to the population. When it comes to surveillance, Lleida installed its public system in the 90′, even before it was legal to do so.

'Therefore, the banning of the burqa is by no means an isolated event. All those towns show a continuum of policies to monitor and control public space, policies that have, in all cases, been proposed by the right and the extreme right but finally implemented by centre-left and centre-right local governments. This continuum when it comes to such policies is evident in the eyes of the explicitly racist, far-right party that has managed to get representation in local councils in the last few years (four councilors in El Vendrell). After the approval of the ban in that town, he told the press: “This doesn’t end here, this is only the beginning“.

'Well, exactly: the Catalan case shows that making concessions to the far-right in seemingly little things only contributes to the normalization of populist solutions, and leads us all into a downward spiral of frightening consequences.'

A report published only last week by the European Fundamental Rights Agency noted how politicians capitalise on public fear and scapegoat minorities, stating:

'Different examples across Europe seem to indicate that, in the context of Muslim communities, the political climate is often dominated by fears which can be played upon by politicians.'