Alex Trelinski
SPAIN’S government has increased monitoring to track ‘hate speech’ on social media after a Murcia region council banned Islamic festivals from using municipal property and land.
The Partido Popular-led authority in Jumilla voted in the controversial measure which was initially proposed by the lone far-right Vox representative on the council.
The government says it intends to follow ‘very closely’ the impact of the council decision.
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- New racism controversy in Spain as council bans Islamic festivals from using its properties and land
The Vox motion referred to the Islamic prayer festivals as ‘cultural practices alien to Spain’ that ‘affect social cohesion, generating internal tensions and conflicts, uprooting and erosion of national identity’.
Sources from the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration have condemned the ‘discriminatory initiative’.
The El Mundo newspaper quoted a source from the ministry stating that they work ‘for a society free of discrimination, racism, and xenophobia’, stressing that ‘freedom of religion and worship is guaranteed in the Constitution’.
Monitoring of social media will be undertaken by the Observatory Against Racism and Xenophobia.
On July 24, it released its findings over the monitoring of hate speech during the period of the Torre Pacheco riots.
It counted more than 138,000 hate messages published on social networks, and 22% of them were removed.
In light of the conclusions of the latest report, the Ministry set up a partnership with the big digital platforms (Meta, X, Tik Tok and Google) a permanent group to monitor social networks in order to ‘detect and eliminate hate speech’.
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