From selective secularism to transcultural agency in Spain’s religious diversity governance

Abstract

This article interrogates the governance of religious and ethnic diversity in contemporary Spain, advancing a critical analysis of selective secularism as a meta-governance logic that structures symbolic hierarchies and practical exclusions. Selective secularism operates through the culturalisation of Catholicism as “neutral” national heritage and the religionisation of minority, especially Muslim, cultural expressions, reinforcing asymmetrical regimes of recognition beneath a veneer of formal pluralism. Through analysis of legal cases, judicial reasoning and the mobilisation of lay Catholic neoconservative networks, the article shows how intersecting top-down and bottom-up mechanisms entrench Catholic dominance while problematising racialised Muslim-coded presence. Building on the Bristol School of Multiculturalism and Sealy’s model of post-multicultural multilogue, Spain is situated as a paradigmatic “post-secular laboratory” in which rapid social transformation exposes both the limits and the inertia of liberal–secular governance. While dialogical engagement and “levelling up” strategies have significantly shaped academic and policy debates, they do not resolve the persistent marginalisation of transcultural actors, particularly descendants of Muslim migrants and native converts to Islam, whose hybrid biographies unsettle dominant binaries yet remain institutionally under-recognised. The article therefore advances a post-secular, transcultural principle of recognition and operationalises transcultural capital not merely as an adaptive resource at the micro or meso level, but as a mechanism for macro-level transformation in diversity governance. Anchored in the ongoing contestation over Islamic burial rights and the evolving practices of the Pluralism and Coexistence Foundation, the analysis demonstrates that only by empowering transcultural actors as co-authors, rather than passive consultees, can Spain recalibrate its model of religious diversity governance. The framework developed offers a way beyond segmented recognition of diversity and cosmetic pluralism, with implications for majority–minority relations across Europe.