Religion has been, and still is, a major influence here in Spain. Since the marriage of Ferdinand II and Isabel I and the conquering of Granada (the last region controlled by the Muslims) in 1492, Catholicism has ruled Spain. General Francisco Franco (the dictator that ruled Spain from 1938-1973) used Catholicism to justify his actions as dictator and to further stretch his power over the Spaniards. His ideology, National Catholicism, was the complete control that the Church had over the public and private lives of all Spaniards. As one can imagine, if religion, or anything, is imposed on a nation, the people of that nation will come to believe what is being imposed upon them or risk death at the hand of the dictatorship. At the same time, when the dictatorship ended, many Spaniards repelled the Church and the ideals it carried.
Since it has only been forty years since the dictatorship fell, there are many Spaniards alive today who lived under Franco. This creates a few different groups of Spaniards: there are those who still live strictly by the laws of the Church (these are mostly older women), there are those who completely ignore all the Church says, and there are those somewhere in the middle. I live with a Spanish family who is “somewhere in the middle,” and it is very interesting to see the rules they follow and those they don’t. For example, they don’t go to mass every Sunday, only the occasional Sunday. Fridays during Lent they don’t eat meat in the house, but my host mom gave me permission to eat meat if I went out to a restaurant with my friends. And there are no religious pictures in our house at all. In my experience, even moderately religious people have at least some religious pictures.
After being here for Semana Santa (Holy Week) and seeing all of the religious processions, it is amazing to think that the majority of Spaniards are all a part of the same religion. The religious processions I saw were incredibly long (some lasted 12 hours or more) and extremely elaborate. It seemed as though the entire city came out for these processions, and it was almost impossible to walk through the city during them. Although they were so elaborate and so many people came out to see them, it seems to me that there is still only a small portion of practicing Catholics in Spain.
Religion definitely has a big influence here but not as much as I had originally thought. However, there is another “religion” that carries a great deal of importance here: soccer. More specifically, Barcelona versus Real Madrid.