At ICAM, Martínez-Torrón explained why Spain stopped signing new religious agreements—and what that means for equality, funding, and rights.
At a commemorative session marking the seventh anniversary of the Canon Law Section of Madrid’s Bar Association (ICAM), a legal question cut through the celebratory tone: if Spain’s Constitution calls for cooperation with religious communities, why does cooperation still look so uneven in practice? Streamed online to viewers well beyond Spain, the event blended institutional pride with a pointed assessment of how Spain manages neutrality, cooperation and equality in the field of religious freedom.
An anniversary with scale—and growing public relevance
Opening the event, Mónica Montero Casillas underscored the section’s momentum: nearly fifty sessions organised in seven years and 734 registered lawyers within the ICAM section. The scene matters because it signals a broader shift: what is often treated as a specialist branch of law—church-state relations—now touches everyday governance, from public services and education to taxation, prisons, hospitals and, increasingly, technology.
That practical frame shaped the keynote lecture by Professor Javier Martínez-Torrón, titled “State agreements with religious denominations: between neutrality, cooperation and equality.”
The constitutional anchor: neutrality is not indifference
Martínez-Torrón’s starting point was Article 16.3 of Spain’s Constitution: the State has no official religion, yet public authorities must take account of society’s religious beliefs and maintain “appropriate relations of cooperation” with the Catholic Church and other denominations.
His core argument was consistent throughout the session: cooperation is not a privilege. Properly understood, it is a way to make religious freedom workable when it operates collectively and socially—chaplaincy, worship spaces, rites, education, or reasonable accommodations within public institutions.
In that light, he pushed back against a political trope that treats the 1979 agreements with the Holy See as mere historical favouritism. For him, the legal logic is the opposite: cooperation, neutrality and equality are tools that shape the practical content of religious freedom.
Bilateralism: the system Spain chose—and then paused
One striking moment was the speaker’s candid shift from earlier academic positions. While he once considered more unilateral state regulation, he now sees Spain’s context differently: where there is a long tradition of bilateral arrangements, abandoning them overnight in favour of a purely state-designed framework could become legally destabilising and politically divisive.
The deeper problem, he argued, is not the existence of agreements, but their stagnation. After the 1992 cooperation laws with the Evangelical, Jewish and Muslim representative bodies, Spain has not meaningfully advanced new agreements with other communities, even when they have been recognised as having “notorio arraigo” (well-established presence).
“Lots of religious freedom—too little specific cooperation”
Technically, one of his sharpest critiques concerned the content of the 1992 agreements themselves: much of what they regulate looks less like “cooperation” and more like baseline religious-freedom protections.
That distinction matters in real administration. When rights are treated as pact-based “benefits,” they can be managed like exceptions rather than as guarantees. The Q&A made the point concrete with a topic that often surfaces in litigation and daily practice: religious diets in public institutions. Martínez-Torrón argued that a cooperative state should provide predictable procedures so reasonable accommodations do not depend on ad-hoc goodwill.
Funding: the issue policymakers avoid naming
Financing quickly became the heart of the session. Spain’s IRPF tax allocation mechanism allows taxpayers to direct 0.7% to the Catholic Church. The dispute, as framed in the conference, is that other socially rooted communities have not been offered an equivalent choice.
Here the discussion turned to the Pluralism and Coexistence Foundation. Martínez-Torrón portrayed it as a workaround created after governments repeatedly refused to extend the tax-allocation model beyond the Catholic Church. His criticism was not that the foundation is unlawful; rather, he warned of two risks: reduced transparency and structural dependency when funding decisions are essentially administrative.
In his view, a fairer approach would be to let taxpayers decide—while keeping the foundation focused on cultural, social and academic programmes rather than acting as a substitute “church funding channel.”
The debate also connected with recent state action: Spain has announced steps to align the fiscal treatment of well-established denominations, and in 2025 adopted a framework for direct subsidies to minority faith bodies that hold cooperation agreements. The policy reality, then, is not “no public money,” but an ongoing conflict over criteria, equality and democratic accountability.
“Notorio arraigo”: recognition without a pathway
Another thread ran through the lecture: once the State chooses to implement cooperation through agreements, it cannot apply cooperation in an arbitrary or discriminatory manner. For Martínez-Torrón, recognising a community as “well-established” while keeping it indefinitely outside negotiated instruments leaves it in a legal limbo.
The implication was strategic as well as constitutional: if equality is a guiding principle, the system cannot rely on permanent provisional fixes.
Spain and Italy: two commissions, two political cultures
A comparative exchange with Rafael Navarro-Valls sharpened the contrast with Italy, where numerous intese exist and more are negotiated. Martínez-Torrón pointed to two factors: Italy lacks a broad religious-freedom law like Spain’s, pushing more issues into agreements; and, crucially, institutional design matters. He described Spain’s advisory structures as heavily dependent on political will to convene, while portraying Italy’s mechanisms as more autonomous and technically driven—able to keep initiatives alive across changing governments.
The takeaway: cooperation needs predictable rules
The session ended with thanks, but its underlying conclusion was clear: Spain’s cooperative model is operational, but uneven—and politically underpowered when it comes to updating itself. Neutrality may be constitutional doctrine, yet equality in practice requires predictable rules, transparent criteria and a long-term commitment that does not fluctuate with political cycles.
