Spain

ODIHR’s insights

For 2024, ODIHR received reports of 126 incidents that took place in Spain in the following bias motivation categories: anti-Christian, anti-Muslim, anti-Roma, and racist and xenophobic. In addition, several incidents involved multiple biases, in particular racist and xenophobic and anti-Muslim, as well as anti-Christian and gender-based, anti-Muslim and disability, and racist and xenophobic and gender-based.

ODIHR observes that more than 70 per cent of incidents reported in Spain were anti-Christian, a majority of which involved damage to community property such as vandalism of churches or cemeteries. However, in several other anti-Christian incidents, priests were subjected to violent threats and intimidation. A series of acts of threatening/harassing behaviour targeting Catholic communities and involving the same group of perpetrators was also reported.  In two anti-Muslim incidents, a mosque and a Muslim prayer room were desecrated with urine. Several of the anti-Semitic incidents reported involved a link to the conflict in the Middle East. ODIHR notes a number of racist incidents involving armed hate group members attacking victims due to their skin colour. Several anti-Muslim incidents were also observed to have an additional racist or xenophobic bias. 

It should be noted that ODIHR did not receive any reporting on Spain relating to anti-LGBTI incidents and a low number of reports on gender-based and disability hate incidents. This indicates potential gaps in the information reported here.