The foundation that manages the Barcelona Office of Religious Affairs paid €175 to denounce Islamophobia
The Bayt al-Thaqafa Foundation receives nearly 3 million euros in public funding each year to defend Muslim immigration. It manages the Religious Affairs Office of Barcelona.
Empoweryouth propaganda
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Barcelona has a municipal service unique in Spain called the Office of Religious Affairs (OAR). The office acts as the City Council's point of reference on matters of religion and belief, advises municipal services and promotes the visibility of religions in the city. The particularity is that this municipal service is outsourced to the Bayt al-Thaqafa Foundation. The City Council has not only outsourced the management of all religions in Barcelona to a Muslim organisation. It has also… Bayt finances the provision of a large part of social assistance to the immigrant Muslim population.: reception, language, regularisation, employment, family support and food. According to the economic report on its website, In 2025 they received at least €3.36 million in public funds through grants and contracts..
The Office of Religious Affairs operates as part of the municipal structure that promotes interculturality (BCN Interculturalitat). Its public communications and activities are disseminated through the channels of this programme under the guise of cultural outreach. This allows for the presentation of religious policies without the confessional component until institutional adaptation to religion seems like a mere policy of coexistence. An example It is the pressure that the religious office exerted during Ramadan 2026 to eliminate music. in schools of Barcelona as intercultural practice.
€175 to denounce Islamophobia
Bayt al-Thaqafa is not limited to spreading the anti-Islamophobia discourse through the Town Hall's loudspeakers, which it is granted control of by the Office of Religious Affairs. It also Participates in specific projects to detect and collect experiences of discrimination., to turn them into a public narrative and give them social and institutional prominence.
One of these programmes is EMPOWERYOUTH. It is about’a project funded by the European Union that recruits young Muslims who have experienced discrimination. To find these young people, The Foundation published and disseminated a message offering €175. to any young person who could share their experience and take part in training. But Empoweryouth's aim goes far beyond gathering testimonies to pad out documents. The objectives stated on its website are:
- Train young Muslims as “agents of change” and “community leaders.”.
- To build and consolidate a young Muslim community.
- Create and disseminate our own narratives about Islamophobia.
- Providing tools to enable them to participate in public debate.
- To create a “multiplier effect” so that they pass these messages on to other young Muslims.
- Facilitating their access to the media and other “spaces of influence.”.
- Promote their participation in social, associative and institutional spheres.
The process does not end with the collection of testimonies. To receive the money, the young people must attend training in leadership, intercultural communication, self-perception and the role of ’agent of change“. Afterwards, they themselves must train and raise awareness among other young Muslims, replicating the content they have learned and extending its reach. The system resembles more a process of talent recruitment, training and integration into a network than a space for denunciation. The young person enters with an incentive of €175, gains access to the organisation's internal benefits and is then invited to replicate the same scheme. with other young people or organisations. This is not just any open call: it is a process of selection, training and multiplication of profiles.
The model that Europe associates with the Muslim Brothers
Bayt al-Thaqafa manages religions in Barcelona and is also part of Empoweryouth., a European project that applies a model which has already generated intelligence service alerts in Europe. The logic of Empoweryouth is almost identical to that of FEMYSO (Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organisations). This association It has been flagged in official European reports and warnings for its proximity to the Muslim Brotherhood.. The 2025 French report on political Islamism and the German secret services placed this network and others like it. within the ecosystem that needs to be monitored. The situation against this network has been escalating until July 2026. The European Parliament announced that the Bureau had decided to exclude FEMYSO from the chamber's activities..
The parallelism between FEMYSO and Empoweryouth is evident in the way they use it. Islamophobia as a field of mobilisation. It was precisely FEMYSO that did so in early 2026. A survey of Catalan university students seeking Islamophobia. The premise was that The campuses are hostile spaces for Muslims. due to a lack of prayer spaces or because the curricula do not cover Islam. The questionnaire thus led to interpreting the unease, the fear or even mental health problems as consequences of structural Islamophobia. And it presented institutional changes as a solution.
It is precisely this model — Islamophobia as a starting point, organisation, training, leadership development and institutional advocacy — that brings FEMYSO close to what Empoweryouth is deploying in Barcelona with European funding through Bayt al-Thaqafa. FEMYSO trains young Muslims to detect discrimination, construct discourse, engage in political advocacy and become “multipliers” within their communities. Empoweryouth reproduces practically the same sequence: it gathers experiences of Islamophobia, transforms them into “new narratives”, trains “change agents” and prepares the participants to then raise awareness and train other young Muslims. They change the acronyms and the executing body, but not the manual: grievance, selection, training, leadership, multiplication and institutional pressure.
From social assistance to political and cultural influence
The circuit is self-reinforcing. The administration funds the organisation that assists Muslims; this same organisation takes part in defining and detecting the alleged discriminatory practices they suffer; it then trains new representatives to explain them, amplify them and demand changes from the institutions. Bayt's privileged presence within the municipal structure makes it very easy for them. The OAR advises municipal services and facilities on religious diversity and Participates in adapting public policies to the practices that Islam needs to permeate society.. This takes shape in very different areas: criteria for cemeteries, guidelines for schools during Ramadan, the promotion of halal food, the provision of prayer spaces, adaptations in the healthcare sector and training so that religious practices can fit into the ordinary operation of public services.
These adaptations are not presented as religious policy, but within the municipal language of interculturality, diversity, community action and the fight against discrimination and racism. The same applies to the cultural aspect: one of the A clearer example is The Barxiluna Project promoted by the Office of Religious Affairs and BCN Interculturality. The project spoke of recovering a supposedly invisibilised “Islamic past and present”. The problem is that it was all based on archaeological research that proved the exact opposite of what they intended. But that didn't stop them, because they had already written the conclusions of the cycle from the very beginning: it was about “proposals for change” for Review educational materials, highlight the Islamic past in museums, adapt cemeteries to Muslim needs and support places of worship, community spaces and religious festivals..
The result is that an entity created to welcome immigrants has become a company with over 100 employees that handles more than €3 million in public funds each year. The circuit feeds back on itself with public funds from Barcelona and the European Union, which finance bodies that detect discrimination and lodge claims that reach the very same institutions, which then fund new measures to address them. Each adaptation achieved thus becomes the starting point for the next in an infinite movement. Public money therefore funds not only the present adaptations, but also the structures responsible for identifying, formulating and defending the following demands.
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