ABSTRACT
In Spain, whenever the members of a Muslim community want to construct a mosque in a city, a deep-seated and immediate reaction of neighbourhood protest begins, generally supported, or at least not hindered and/or not contradicted, by local authorities. The attitude of local authorities towards the issue of Muslim residents can be summed up by their recognition of the existence of a place of worship on private premises (private homes, community centres, etc.) and their reluctance to recognize the need to give Muslims the public visibility enjoyed by the Catholic Church (Moreras, 1999; 2003). The management of this issue of recognition almost always constitutes a landmark for political authorities and citizens in any account dealing with the way Spain is handling the (latter-day) Muslim presence in its territory. Invariably, public opinion polls on these topics reveal that the majority of Spanish citizens link their opposition to immigrants in general and to the Muslim community in particular, especially the most numerous one, the Moroccan community (Pérez-Diaz et al., 2004). It is a fact that in Spain Muslim and Islamic issues have appeared in the public sphere with rather rigid images attached to them. Almost all the negative immigration news is related to the Muslim community.
