Barcelona’s Monumental will not be a mosque

The Balañá Group, owner of the land, has flatly denied that it is negotiating the conversion of the old Monumental bullring into a large mosque built thanks to a donation from an emir of Qatar.

This is the information that has been published since last January by some media outlets and that emerges and resurfaces, with increasingly extravagant details that are taken for granted, such as that the minaret would reach 300 meters in height (the central tower of the Sagrada Família will one day be the tallest building in the city, with 172 meters) or that the planned investment would reach 2,200 million euros, a real barbarity.

A spokesman for the company that owns the bullring has denied any indication of plausibility to the information. The Barcelona City Council did the same, since that same hoax maintains that the municipal representatives have an open line of negotiation with the Qatari authorities.

The mayor Xavier Trias himself has said that, although it would be logical for there to be a mosque in Barcelona, it would be the Monumental and with those figures it does not make sense, after comparing it with the budget of the Disseny Hub – which cost 90 million – “If we were to invent, I would like the Monumental to become a great museum of childhood”, he has assured as an example.

Barcelona has the largest Muslim population in Spain, reaching 465,142 Muslims, compared to 276,787 people in Andalusia, followed by 255,088 in Madrid and 183,526 in Valencia according to data from the Observatory of Religious Pluralism in Spain, which is based on figures from the Ministry of Justice. With such a large number of Muslims, many of them of Spanish nationality, it is logical to think that these communities want to have places of worship. Now, from this attempt to turn the Monumental into a mosque goes a world; even more so when, returning to the world of figures, we find that there are currently 260 places of worship in Catalonia, 195 in Andalusia, 182 in Valencia and 109 in the Community of Madrid, according to data from the aforementioned observatory.

There is no indication of the reality of this alleged project, however, and as on numerous occasions, the hoax has spread like wildfire.

There are explanations and reasons for all tastes; from biased interpretations that accuse the Generalitat de Catalunya of wanting to attract the sympathies of the resident Muslim community to support its independence project, to getting rid of the old bullfighting arenas as happened with the Plaza de las Arenas, since 2011 converted into a shopping center, to try to prevent an eventual political change from bringing bullfights back to Barcelona.

In this sense, the leader of UpB, Jordi Portabella (ERC), has spoken out, who has considered that it is a trial balloon to “see if someone gets nervous, so that someone wonders if it would be better for bullfights to be held again or if the City Council should buy the Monumental for this astronomical figure”.

Be that as it may, it is not the first time that this hoax appears on the scene since in the middle of the real estate bubble there was also speculation about the sale of these lands, making it clear in the end that there had been no real offer.

Author: Nizzar Vizcaino