Christianophobia and Islamophilia in Catalonia

Arran targets Christian churches with vandalism and graffiti, but objects to those who treat mosques in a similar manner.

El Nacional reported that the Catalan leftists displayed a banner at the feet of Our Lady of Montserrat to denounce “the avalanche of sexual abuse cases within the Catholic Church”.

On the sign can be seen the faces of Montserrat’s abbot, Josep Maria Soler, Girona’s bishop, Francesco Pardo, and Tarragona’s archbishop, Jaume Pujol, and it reads: “May your God forgive you. The Church is abuse and male supremacy”.

The youth organisation denounced “the sexual abuses and their cover-up afterwards, the role of the Church as a fundamental pillar of the patriarchal system, with misogynistic and male-supremacist discourses, and the Catholic Church as an indispensable piece for the machinery […] and the perpetuation of it”.

According to Spanish daily Actuall, “the hard Left comes out in support of a mosque after attacking Catholic and Evangelical churches”. The daily adds that they “have demonstrated their double standards when the time comes to relate to believers”.

The leftists denounced insulting graffiti painted on a mosque in Sant Celoni, Barcelona, with the text “f***ing dead Moors”, announcing that in 12 hours the wall would be repainted, and ending with the slogan “love against barbarism”.

On Monday, Arran published two pictures of members of its organisation helping paint over the graffiti on the mosque, stating: “We condemn any display of fascism”.

“The attack on the mosque is without doubt immoral, but the CUP’s attitude can only be described as a colossal display of hypocrisy. And that’s because one of the groups that form CUP is Arran, a hard-Left pro-independence youth organisation that has taken part in violent acts of vandalism in different places,” the daily explained.

As a sample of that, in November 2013 Arran attacked Sant Ot’s Catholic church in Barcelona, covering it in purple paint on the facade and leaving a graffiti signed by the group. It even boasted about the attack on its website, displaying a video of the crime, carried out in the middle of the night.

A few months later, in March of 2014, Arran attacked an Evangelical church in Torredembarra, Tarragona, throwing purple paint bombs against the first two floors of the front of the building, for the simple reason that Evangelical churches defend the right to life from conception, while Arran argues that abortion is a right. Once more, far from hiding their crimes, Arran defended the attack on its website.

In November 2015, the far-left organisation once again proudly displayed its Christianophobia, painting a graffito signed by Arran in Premiá del Mar, Barcelona, with the text “The only church that lights up is the one that burns”, written in Catalan.

Once more, on its local Facebook page, Arran claimed the authorship of the Christianophobic graffiti, and even justified it when faced with the huge amount of criticism it received.

In September 2016, the hard-leftist organisation tried again, this time attacking the Basilica of Santa María de la Aurora’s College in Manresa in Barcelona with pro-abortion graffiti, not caring in the least that it was defacing a Gothic structure which has been declared a historical monument, an artistic treasure that merits special protection.

Strangely, the Christianophobes protesting Islamophobia, boast about being defenders of “love”.

Arran is defined as a socialist youth organisation “committed to political and economic independence and reunification of the Catalan Countries, the attainment of socialism and overcoming patriarchy from a feminist perspective”.

They are against the status quo of Spanish political parties that was established after 1978, and the the King who was designated as guarantor of political transition and national unity. This status quo is known as “Regime” in Spanish.