(From Marti Wade’s missionscatalyst.org). An update from the Observatory of Religious Pluralism in Spain [reveals] some of the challenges and opportunities facing Christians in the traditionally Catholic country.
The latest release of data collected across a municipal level has revealed that while Catholicism continues to be the dominant Christian expression, with three-quarters of the places of worship recorded in the report belonging to that tradition, evangelical Christianity has continued to grow over the last two decades.
Of the almost 31,000 places of worship across the nation, the vast majority were either Catholic or evangelical, with 22,947 and 4,259 churches respectively, with Muslims following in third with 1,749.
The number of evangelical churches has shown a significant increase since 2011, when there were only 2,944.
The growth in the numbers of evangelical Christians has been driven by an influx of believers from Latin America, but a 2019 report from Evangelical Focus Europe pointed to their numbers being concentrated in urban centers, with only Madrid (420), Barcelona (220), and Valencia (112) having over 100 evangelical churches. This leaves over 90% of towns and villages across Spain without an evangelical place of worship.