The Department of Feminisms at Tània Verge (ERC) funded Arabic courses for Muslim women for their “insertion into the labour market.”
The De La Paz Mosque in Old Trinidad has received more than €225,000 in grants from Barcelona City Council and the Department of Feminisms, conditional on not discriminating on the basis of gender, refraining from religious proselytising and facilitating social and labour inclusion.
Award of €14,800 for the year 2023 (link) of the Department of Feminisms.
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The Department for Equality and Feminisms of the Generalitat of Catalonia awards annual grants to non-profit organisations through various lines of funding. These grants are intended to promote equality of rights, the participation and social and labour inclusion of groups such as women, LGBTI people, migrants, victims of gender-based violence or people at risk of social exclusion. Among the highlighted lines is the Programme F, oriented towards projects of inclusion, literacy, access to rights and the fight against racism and discrimination. The subsidised activities must have a real impact on improving the lives of the beneficiaries., especially in terms of autonomy, useful training and employment opportunities.
To be eligible for these grants, organisations must meet a series of administrative and substantive conditions. This includes that the proposed activities comply with the principles of equality and non-discrimination., and ensure that the funded actions are accessible to all people, regardless of their gender, origin or legal status. Furthermore, the projects must be assessable, transparent and unconnected with any religious or ideological proselytising activity. Regarding the language of the activities, there is no requirement:
Spanish-language sign at the mosque with information about the activities held in a public venue.
One of the entities that receives the most funding from both the Barcelona City Council and the Generalitat of Catalonia is The Islamic Community Friends of the Mosque of Peace of the Old Trinity neighbourhood of Barcelona. In its normal course of worship The women participate in a segregated space in a small room with no visibility..
The pointlessness of Arabic courses for women
The project “Consolidating the learning of the Arabic and Catalan language and culture aimed at children, young people and women.”It has received funding from both the Department for Equality and Feminisms of the Generalitat of Catalonia and the Barcelona City Council. The ERC's Tània Verge department awarded €6,148 in 2022, €14,800 in 2023 and €12,993 in 2024 for Arabic courses for women, totalling almost €34,000.. The Town Council contributed €3,808 in 2019, €5,840 in 2020, €5,575 in 2021, €4,600 in 2022, €5,000 in 2023 and €3,000 in 2024. In total, This project has received €61,764 in public funds over six years to teach Arabic and Arab culture to a group that already has prior knowledge of the language. And, in any case, it will not help him improve his employment situation in Catalonia.
Furthermore, eThe design of the activity shows a clear absence of adult men as beneficiaries.. This approach connects with an ideological strategy characteristic of certain currents such as the Muslim Brotherhood, that prioritise the training of women and young people as a way to consolidate a society structured around Islamic religious values. The figure of the mother, and of the young person in the process of formation, is seen as fundamental to transmitting identity and norms. In contrast, adult men already receive religious instruction directly in the place of worship and, therefore, are not included in this type of subsidised cultural training.
The City Council of Barcelona's gender-perspective grants
According to The general grant regulations of the Barcelona City Council
, The gender perspective must be integrated both into the project and into the organisation's structure.. It is necessary to demonstrate a commitment to equality and non-discrimination to ensure that public funds are allocated to initiatives aligned with the values of equity, inclusion and respect for rights. The bar for equality is very low since Women can only pray in a small, separate space that is out of sight..
Interior of the mosque with the women's section at the back.
In the case of the Department for Equality and Feminisms, the regulatory bases
They stipulate that the subsidised activities cannot discriminate on the grounds of gender., However, they do not explicitly require the applicant entity to uphold this principle across its entire operations. This allows courses for women only to be subsidised in a religious organisation where, in its regular worship, women participate on unequal terms.
Possible subsidised religious proselytising under the guise of a language course.
Both the Barcelona City Council and the Department for Equality and Feminisms of the Generalitat of Catalonia Their rules state that activities with religious or ideological proselytising content cannot be subsidised..
However, in some cases, these lines can become blurred. Although presented as a language course, Arabic programmes organised by religious institutions often use the Qur'an as teaching material., which turns language learning into a form of doctrinal transmission. Moreover, when these courses are exclusively aimed at women, children and young people They can act as spaces of ideological control rather than real emancipation.. In these cases, the boundary between cultural action and religious message becomes blurred.
This model Remember The case of the Salafist school for girls and women in the Poble Sec neighbourhood with a very rigid religious vision centred on submission and obedience. When these activities are funded with public money, the purpose of the grants is perverted: instead of empowering women, They are kept within training circuits that reinforce traditional roles and limit personal autonomy..
An example of this risk is the case of the French imam Rachid Abou Houdeyfa, who told the children that listening to music could turn them into “monkeys and pigs”. These events show what can happen when an educational role is given to figures or entities that, under the label of cultural activity, They convey dogmatic messages and are contrary to democratic values.. The danger is even more serious when the courses are aimed at children and young people and are funded with public money without clear pedagogical oversight.
Subsidised religious meals with gender segregation
Where the presence of women is permitted is at the religious meals of the breaking of the fast of the Ramadans. Between 2021 and 2025, The Barcelona City Council and the Generalitat of Catalonia have allocated €33,098 of public funds to finance the so-called iftars community-based. The City Council has contributed €17,095, and the Generalitat, through Feminisms and the Presidency, €16,003. Each year, these celebrations at the Mosque of Peace receive similar amounts: €6,400 in 2021, around €7,800 in 2022, €6,600 in 2023, €5,500 in 2024 and €1,500 in 2025. The result is that Each meal during Ramadan costs the authorities around €6,000..
Although women participate, these gatherings maintain a gender segregation incompatible with the spirit of the grant regulations: Men and women sit separately, with a predominant female participation in cooking and serving tasks.. Despite the evidence, they receive funding from institutions that stipulate there must be no form of gender discrimination and that these are spaces where equality and participation on an equitable basis are promoted. Moreover, they pray there collectively, turning the meal into an act of worship, which is in direct conflict with the conditions established by the institutions themselves, where they state that that the funded activities may not include acts of religious proselytising or elements of worship.
Iftars are presented as an invitation to communal harmony for non-Muslim citizens, but the paradox is that these very citizens are the ones who pay for them. It is hard to understand that a meal presented as a “gift to the community” costs €6,593 of public funds.. And, at the same time, these same people do not take part in social activities that are not connected to their religion.
More than €225,000 for a small mosque in a former car park
In addition to the annual grants for cultural activities and religious meals, The Islamic Community Friends of the Mosque of Peace has received €111,144 from Barcelona City Council for renovation works on its premises. The premises are a former car park that can accommodate no more than 50 men. and half a dozen women.
In addition, It has also received over €18,000 in additional funding for opening celebrations and open days.. In total, between the contributions from Barcelona City Council and the Generalitat of Catalonia, The entity has accumulated nearly €225,000 in public funding over five years.. The figures show a clear institutional commitment to this organisation, despite its internal operations and many of the activities it organises breaching the criteria of equality, secularism, non-discrimination and inclusion of people in Catalan society that the public subsidy regulations themselves require.
This continued support highlights a deep inconsistency in public policy: Resources are allocated to an entity that maintains gender segregation, carries out activities with religious content and closes itself off, without participating in general community life.. Ultimately, the paradox is that citizens are “invited” to meals and activities that they themselves fund with their taxes, while a gender-segregated space and child indoctrination are reinforced, which has little to do with the inclusion or equality that institutions claim to champion.
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