The CEC presents Collboni with the evangelical demands of Barcelona

The Evangelical Council of Catalonia delivered the Declaration of Barcelona to the Mayor of Barcelona and requested help to disseminate it. The meeting addressed the historical Protestant memory in the city.

The Evangelical Council of Catalonia (CEC) handed over the Declaration of Barcelona, a document outlining the historical demands of the city's evangelical churches, to the Mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, last Monday. Its general secretary, Guillem Correa, asked the mayor to collaborate in its dissemination.

Also attending the meeting were the president of the CEC, Joan Martínez, and other representatives of the evangelical community. According to the entity, the mayor committed to helping increase the visibility of the Protestant presence in Barcelona.

Among the topics discussed were the recognition of the historical memory of Protestantism in the city and the situation of the former Protestant areas in Barcelona's cemeteries. The needs of local churches, their social and educational actions, and access to Evangelical Religious Education (ERE) in public and charter schools were also discussed.

This request is not new for the Council, which has been advocating for it at the municipal level for years. In September, it became particularly visible with a commemorative panel installed at the Sant Andreu cemetery, as part of the project to recover the five former Protestant areas of the city.

These spaces were established in the 19th century under regulations that separated burials by confession. Protestants occupied the areas with the worst conditions, without chapels or any visible sign of their faith. This separation did not disappear until the Second Republic, when the cemeteries became municipal.

The foundations of the Declaration

The document was unanimously approved by the representatives of the CEC on April 29 of this year. It begins with a fundamental question about whether the time has come for the evangelical Church to rise in Catalonia, referencing the German Church that broke its silence in the face of the rise of Nazism.

The text asserts that citizens must obey the laws of the State, especially when they defend fundamental rights. It warns that a State becomes totalitarian when it forces obedience to norms contrary to faith, denouncing all forms of totalitarianism. It does so particularly against:

“those who speak in the name of God”

The Declaration also reminds that true religion, in the eyes of God, is that which cares for the most disadvantaged. The CEC links this principle to the social work of its churches, a matter that was also present in the conversation with the mayor.