Spain?s identity crisis

Thirteen years on from the last papal visit to Spain, Benedict XVI arrives in Valencia next Saturday. He will find a nation increasingly secular and at odds with the Church in matters of marriage, mass consumerism and religious education

Movie buffs are likely to remember the magical scene of Spain's eleventh-century Christian hero El Cid (played by Charlton Heston) dying in Valencia, only to be propped up on a horse and led out through the city gates, his eternal frame putting to flight the invading Moorish armies.

The visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Valencia on 8 July is unlikely to take on similar epic proportions, but his arrival will no doubt focus attention on Valencia's current dual reputation as one Spain's most historic and progressive cities, while fuelling wider political tensions across the country.

This week Valencian craftsmen were putting the final touches to the elaborate altar at which the Pope will celebrate Mass and address a massive crowd. In a city whose ancient cathedral's most celebrated icon is the Santo Caliz, believed locally to be the chalice used by Christ at the Last Supper, it is hoped that the papal visit will project an image of a universal Church demanding its place in a modern world.

But the days leading up to the Pope's arrival have served as a reminder that not all Spaniards are agreed on what a modern society should and can be. Two weeks before the Pope's scheduled touchdown, the Archbishop of Valencia, Agust?n Garc?a-Gasco y Vicente, supported by the local regional government of the opposition centre-right Partido Popular (PP), criticised as an "offensive provocation" the Spanish socialist government's funding of a gay conference on alternative forms of the family.

The Vatican made no comment, but Church sources suggest that Pope Benedict will use his visit to remind Spaniards of his firm opposition to any union that is not specifically a bona fide marriage between man and woman and to make more than a passing reference to the value of Catholic religious education over which local bishops, clergy and the more traditional Catholic laity feel under attack from the Government.

In contemplating what kind of atmosphere might greet Pope Benedict it is worth remembering the water that has gone under the Spanish political bridge since his predecessor, Pope John Paul, visited Spain in the summer of 1993. Then the leader of the Spanish socialist party, Felipe Gonz?lez, had just been elected to a fourth term after calling a snap election six months ahead of schedule - a move not unconnected with the calculation that what the Pope might say would not be all that favourable to the Government.

We shall never know the extent to which the most charismatic of popes might have swung the vote had he arrived before rather than after a general election. But from the moment he spoke on Spanish soil, Pope John Paul touched many opposition hearts by expressing his concern that Spain's nascent democracy had drifted away from the Church and Catholic values. Consumerism was treated as a new god, and liberalised divorce and abortion laws threatened the family and the right to life. The days when Spanish bishops joined socialists in opposition to Franco in the final years of the regime seemed history.

Thirteen years on, Pope Benedict will not be on such an extended or official visit to Spain. He is honouring a diary date of his predecessor and attending the fifth World Meeting of Families that once again finds the Vatican and a majority of the Spanish bishops at loggerheads with a socialist Government led by Gonz?lez's similarly agnostic successor, Jos? Luis Rodr?guez Zapatero.

Few serious political pundits expected the youthful but inexperienced Zapatero to win the general election in the spring of 2004. But he was thrust into power, in the midst of a national trauma, three days after the Madrid train bombings. The biggest terrorist attack ever on mainland Europe had many Spanish voters reacting against their Government's military involvement in Iraq and the way the bombings were initially blamed on the Basque terrorist group ETA when in fact fanatical Islamists were responsible.

Both during his campaign and immediately after his election, Zapatero's speeches were, as the intuitive Financial Times Madrid correspondent, Leslie Crawford, recalled recently, "peppered with references to citizenship, inclusion, democracy, the importance of dialogue and the obligation to respect opponents' view". Undoubtedly Zapatero's conciliatory message struck a chord with the electorate, part of which had grown tired of the Right's confrontational politics of the Government led by Jos? Mar?a Aznar.

After being re-elected for a second term at the start of the second millennium, Aznar's presidential style had become increasingly autocratic, undermining parliamentary accountability and damaging the professional reputation of the state-run media outlets, which allowed themselves to be manipulated by the Government.

Far from heeding Pope John Paul's earlier warnings about excessive consumerism, there developed in Spain, notably in Madrid, a get-rich-quick society. In Madrid, the big urban sprawl of buildings and roads seemed relentless in its expansion despite the fact that 10 per cent of the population lived on less than 300 euros (little more than ?200) a month.

Zapatero's initiatives on the international arena have included the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq, his sending of "peacekeeping troops" to Afghanistan, and a call for a United Nations-backed "dialogue of civilisations" between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds. And then in March this year came the announcement by ETA that it was laying down its arms for good after 38 years of Basque separatist violence. While the "permanent ceasefire" is likely to take many more months before being proved as genuine, the halt to ETA's bloody campaign has undoubtedly helped Zapatero's political standing. The announcement followed intense behind-the-scenes contacts between the socialists and Batasuna (ETA's political wing), with Catalan politicians and members of the Catholic Church - namely Irish clergy and Basque bishops - also playing key roles.

So far the political narrative I have laid out would suggest that Pope Benedict would be well advised to look forward to his Spanish trip and his meeting with Zapatero as an opportunity to rejoice in an enlightened, democratically elected politician. Yet it is other areas of policy pursued by Zapetero's Government that have upset the Vatican, fired up a vociferous number of Spanish bishops and priests (excluding some Catalans and Basques) and provided a rallying cry for the opposition PP.
Over the last year, controversy has been stirred by the Government's legalising of gay marriage, planning to reduce radically the grip the Catholic Church has on education by no longer making Catholic religious teaching compulsory, and accelerating the devolution process by giving more autonomous powers to the regions. All these are anathema to those who see themselves as the true custodians of a Catholic Spanish nation state.

Certainly mass anti-Government demonstrations and some of the rhetoric used recently over these controversial policies bring echoes of a darker period of Spanish history. For it was the perceived anti-clericalism and the greater powers given to the regional governments of Catalonia and the Basque country by the Left during the Spanish Republic in the 1930s that contributed to the outbreak and fuelled the Spanish Civil War.

What makes the current political debate so divisive is that it is largely underpinned by two diametrically opposed versions of Spanish history. Within the socialist party and further to the Left, there are those who are not content with simply knocking down statues of Franco. They want to eradicate his legacy - the compromises that formed Spain's transition to democracy after 35 years of dictatorship. The PP, meanwhile, far from ditching the confrontational strategy favoured by Aznar, is under his successor Mariano Rajoy accusing Zapatero of dismantling the Spanish state as it was designed in the post-Franco constitution of 1978.

Amid the heat and the passion, more sober comments are hard to come by in Spain these days. In the run-up to the papal visit, Francisco Vazquez, the newly appointed Spanish ambassador to the Holy See and a practising Catholic, said he had told the Vatican that his Government has no plans to liberalise Spain's abortion laws still further or to propose euthanasia. He also offered ongoing "dialogue" with the Church on education reform.

In the days leading up to the Pope's visit and its aftermath, Spaniards, Catholics included, could do well to remember the words of Isidro Goma, the Archbishop of Toledo at the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939."Peace will not last nor will it be a true one unless every Spaniard opens his arms of brotherhood and embraces the other," wrote Goma in a pastoral letter. "I know from conversations I have had that there is too much hate in too many hearts which has been fuelled by the terrible event of the past."

Jimmy Burns is an author and journalist. A new edition of his Literary Companion to Spain is published by Santana Books.