Barcelona’s Monumental will not be a mosque

The Balañá Group, owner of the land, has categorically denied that it is negotiating the reconversion 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 and that emerges and resurfaces, with increasingly extravagant details that are taken for granted, such as for example that the minaret would reach 300 meters in height (the central tower of the Sagrada Família will someday 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 hint of credibility to the information.
The same was done by the Barcelona City Council, since the same hoax claims that the municipal representatives have an open line of negotiation with the Qatari authorities.
Mayor Xavier Trias himself has said that, although it would be logical for Barcelona to have a mosque, it does not make sense that the Monumental would be one, and with these figures, after comparing it with the budget of the Disseny Hub -which cost 90 million-“If I were to invent, I would like the Monumental to become a great museum of childhood”, he said 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 would want to have places of worship, but from this pretension to turning the Monumental into a mosque is a world away; even more so when, going back 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 whatsoever of the reality of this supposed project, however, and as happens on numerous occasions, the hoax has spread like wildfire.
There are explanations and motives 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 pro-independence project, to getting rid of the old bullrings as happened with the Plaza de las Arenas, since 2011 reconverted into a shopping center, to try to avoid that an eventual political change would bring back the bullfights to the city of Barcelona.
In this sense, the leader of UpB, Jordi Portabella (ERC), has pronounced himself in this sense, 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 the said land, but in the end it became clear that there had been no real offer.
Author: Nizzar Vizcaino