Losing Their Religion - religious study in Mallorca

Good news for Mallorcan agnostics. Religious education is less popular than it was. The Balearics have fewer students taking religion than any other autonomous region in Spain. And for religion, read Catholicism. There is a vast discrepancy between private and public educational institutions and between primary, secondary and the higher level of the Baccalaureate, but the trend for religious education is downwards. Less than 15% of those in public secondary schools undertake such study.

There are various reasons being advanced as to this growing irreligiousness among the youth of Mallorca and the islands, such as other courses and a growing cosmopolitan population, but the findings of the ministry of education seem indisputable - religion, Catholicism, is in retreat, at secondary school anyway.

Is this so surprising? Why the Balearics might be less religious than elsewhere is curious, but the islands are subject to the same dynamics as elsewhere in Spain, these dynamics - for the young - being what you might expect: youth culture, normal adolescent rebellion, and the like. The findings might be good news for agnostics, but they don't necessarily mean that religion and Catholicism are in a freefall of disinterest. However, there are other dynamics, not least of which are political. Spain, and the Balearics, have been kicked into greater secularism on the back of social reforms, those that have caused outrage among the conservative, Catholic right - itself a natural target of rejection for the young. These reforms - liberalised abortion, gay rights, easier divorce, assisted suicide (possibly) - sit unwell with that conservativism, but they are in tune with a modern societal impulse propelled by the Zapatero administration which has, some say, been hell-bent on a collision course with the Church.

While attitudes of the young may well continue into adulthood, there is - perhaps - one factor that endures and which favours an essential religiosity, and that it is the family. Religious studies may be in decline, but the traditions that surround families' rites of passage - from baptism through the communion to marriage - do not necessarily show signs of being undermined. Nor does the power of the family, despite the liberality of gay marriage or termination.

Nevertheless, it is undeniable that strong criticism is reserved for the Church, especially among younger Mallorcans, those into adulthood. It is seen as an obstacle and even anachronistic. It has also, thanks to the publicity surrounding the law of historic memory and the rejection of all things Franco, been exposed - for many - as a reactionary force, supporting nationalism and authoritarianism during the Civil War and its aftermath.

For outside observers, such as myself, one from an irreligious background, the trappings of some local religion seem bizarre, such as the zeal of aspirants to the role of Santa Margalida's Beata, young-ish girls lining up for a public, fiesta statement of modern-day sainthood and devil rejection. It's easy to see such a tradition as oddly quaint, but tradition does still pervade - up to a point. The fiesta, and its religious basis, has undergone a transformation. There is a debate in Palma regarding the San Sebastià fiesta - whether it should actually be held in summer, rather than winter, and also whether it has gone too far in the direction of being some youth-fest of rock bands and DJs. For the Mallorcan young, many of them, fiesta is not a religious celebration, but an opportunity to get off their face and to dance to the pagan of the turntable and mix. Ironic, but the religious justification of the fiesta in its current-day party guise may have actually done as much, if not more, than Spanish politics to have diminished religious studies and religion - period.


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