Protestants in Spain

A Protestant in Spain today is a second-class citizen. So concludes Pulitzer-Prizewinning Reporter Homer Bigart, who last week reported on a month spent in Spain on his way home from a year's tour of duty in the Iron Curtain countries. Writing in the New York Herald Tribune, Correspondent Bigart, 41, cited some chapter & verse to back up his conclusion.

A Spanish Protestant, he said, "cannot hold official position in the government, nor can he rise to officer's rank in the army unless he conceals his religious beliefs. He is not allowed to practice his faith in public. The chapel he attends must not display any exterior evidence that it is a place of worship. It cannot advertise its existence--not even with a bulletin board. It cannot be listed in the public directories." According to Bigart, a Protestant clergyman "suffers much the same type of persecution as the Roman Catholic clergy endure in Communist Hungary," although he noted that no Protestant clergyman is in jail.

The pattern of the Protestants' lot has changed somewhat, according to Reporter Bigart, since the outbreaks of popular violence against them more than a year ago. In a 1947 pastoral letter, writes Bigart, Pedro Cardinal Segura y Saenz, Archbishop of Seville, measured Protestantism against "atheistic and Soviet Communism" as being among "other grave dangers which perhaps are more to be feared because they inspire less horror." The van-dalistic raids on Protestant churches that followed simmered down last year, when the Spanish government began to clamp down more tightly than ever on Protestant activities.

"The last reported incident," Bigart writes, "occurred last summer, when 18 Protestants were arrested at Medina del Campo, near Valladolid, on charges of holding a clandestine prayer meeting. They were jailed and fined 1,000 to 2,000 pesetas (equivalent to two months' pay for the average Spanish worker)."

In a poor section of Madrid, Correspondent Bigart talked to the Rev. Carlos Aranjo. " 'In Madrid we can't complain,' [the Evangelical pastor] said. 'It's the national capital, and the government is anxious not to offend foreigners. But in the provinces it is quite different. Eight or ten chapels have been forced to close ...'

"Marriage and baptism by the Protestant clergy have no legal recognition.* This is a particular hardship to our workers, who, since they are not legally considered married, are thus denied wage supplements for their wives and children. Our dead are denied interment in. church cemeteries, and because there are very few civil burial grounds, they must often be buried in the open field ... In Spain the hierarchy is more intransigent than in other countries. If we were a bigger minority it might be different, but the Church is determined to keep us small. We cannot even distribute church calendars through the mail. Yet, as generally happens under repression, we are not only holding our own, but growing slightly.'"

* A curious departure from Roman Catholic canon law, which holds marriages between non-Catholic valid as contracts.

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