Barcelona Mayoral Candidate Eyes Bullring-to-Mosque Conversion
The convert to Islam linked to Spain’s Partido Andalusí has announced his intention to run for mayor of Barcelona, on a platform built around representing Muslims, immigrants and the descendants of recent arrivals.
Hasan Izquierdo set out his bid in a video presenting a vision of the Catalan capital shaped by the demographic and cultural shifts of recent decades. He has argued that Barcelona has changed profoundly and that mainstream politics has yet to reflect this.
Izquierdo describes the city as a mixed, Mediterranean place crossed by many cultural influences, and rejects what he regards as exclusionary attitudes towards Muslims and newer migrant communities.
Central to his message is the legacy of Al-Andalus. Izquierdo has said that the influence of Muslim Iberia forms part of the cultural history of Spain, and that this inheritance has been sidelined by dominant historical accounts. He has tied figures as varied as the architect Antoni Gaudí and the medieval writer Anselm Turmeda to a reading of the past defined by exchange across the Mediterranean.
The Andalusí leader has also argued that Muslim communities should stop being merely a subject of political debate and become political actors with their own representation. He has said the changing make-up of cities such as Barcelona would in time create new forms of participation.
His program includes specific measures. One is the creation of “civic agents” of Maghrebi origin to work in certain neighborhoods as mediators between the authorities and immigrant residents, a step he believes could ease integration.
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His most striking proposal concerns the Monumental, one of the city’s best-known landmarks. Izquierdo has publicly backed turning the former bullring into a large mosque and Islamic cultural center. He has argued that the venue has stood underused since Catalonia banned bullfighting, and that its neo-Arab and Mudéjar architecture would suit a major Muslim place of worship.
The bid has emerged amid sharpening debate in Spain over immigration, identity and integration.
Izquierdo presents himself as an answer to political messaging hostile to Muslims, though his project also raises the question of how far representation should be organized around specific cultural identities.
Source: brusselssignal.eu
