Burca no (depending on the case)

When the French Parliament established by law in 2010 the first ban on the full-face veil in Europe, it was said that the Republic "could not be lived with a veiled face." vivre ensembleThis led the French legislator to declare, in the preamble to the law, that "no one may, in public spaces, wear clothing intended to conceal their face." Therefore, the basis for this prohibition was not so much the classic argument of republican secularism—invoked years earlier to eradicate the veil from schools—as a factor linked to security and public order: the fact that people cannot mask their identity behind a garment. This is not a new idea. In school, we learned about the famous Squillace riot, the popular uprising that took place in Madrid during the reign of Charles III, motivated, among other things, by the prohibition of wearing long capes and wide-brimmed hats that concealed the face.

This new civic and security approach stemmed from a corrective measure issued by the French Council of State regarding a previous attempt to ban headscarves in schools. The Council had ruled that secularism is a principle applicable to the State, not to individuals, and in no case as a burden affecting their religious freedom. Once the French courts and the European Court of Human Rights upheld the law (SAS v. France, 2014), countries such as Austria, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, with very different models of Church-State relations and far removed from French secularism, also banned full-face veils. Less dogmatic and more pragmatic than France, these states, in addition to emphasizing the argument of civic coexistence, security, and the proper functioning of public services, added a myriad of other elements: integration, social cohesion, the principle of equality, and the dignity of women. Thus, by prohibiting not only the full-face veil such as the burka or niqab, but also other garments in public or in certain administrative offices, they avoided clashing with a religious confession such as Islam and with the prescription of the use of this clothing which, according to some exegetes, the prophet prescribed.

In Catalonia, the debate arose in 2010 following the French initiative, when several city councils—especially Lleida—promoted ordinances to prohibit the full-face veil in municipal buildings (administrative offices, libraries, swimming pools). These proposals sparked an intense political and media debate, also at the national level. After Lleida, other cities, such as Reus and Barcelona, ​​attempted similar measures. In 2013, the Supreme Court put an end to this prohibitionist push by annulling the ordinance of the capital of the Segrià region. The court ruled that the city council lacked the authority, as it was attempting to regulate a matter reserved for the national legislature because it affected several fundamental rights. And now, the issue has resurfaced following a recent bill proposed by Vox in the Congress of Deputies—two others are pending discussion—and a motion by the People's Party (PP) in the Catalan Parliament, which received the support of Vox and Aliança Catalana.

Political vicissitudes continue to highlight that this is a discontinuous and rather superfluous debate: it is neither a widespread practice nor is there any record of incidents in which security has been seriously compromised as a result of face coverings in public spaces. However, we have already seen that this is not an issue unique to our country. Whether there is a genuine basis for it or whether it is a blatant political manipulation of the issue in the context of the growing rise of Islamophobic far-right ideologies, it is a thoroughly European debate. Moreover, when the Strasbourg Court upheld the French law, it did so in light of the Treaty of Rome, adding that states have considerable leeway in managing religious pluralism, depending on the historical and sociological circumstances of each case.

This does not mean that it is not a matter that raises serious questions from a constitutional point of view, if we consider that these garments, when used voluntarily and without coercion, are a manifestation of religious freedom. Furthermore, forcing a woman in a free state to abandon her veil simply by appealing to her dignity is not easy: taking this argument to its extreme would lead us to prohibit cloistered nunneries or certain decisions protected by the right to one's own body. What I mean is that it is not easy to judge many religious practices from a purely emancipatory perspective, at the risk of falling into a legal paternalism that ends up destroying religious freedom or restricting the free development of personality.

Now, without needing to get involved in such a protean notion as dignity of personsthe concept ofpublic space The school—the place where citizenship is most fully expressed—has, in a democracy, a dimension that cannot be ignored and deserves special protection. Therefore, in terms of strict public reason, and although there is no widespread problem in Catalonia, and the majority of women neither wear the full-face veil nor wish to do so, since concealing the face undermines the basic principles of democratic coexistence, a ban on the full-face veil in places like schools would be legitimate. However—and this is important—any such prohibition must be completely neutral and as far removed from religious dogmatism as it is from the Penal Code. In particular, prejudices against Islam must be eradicated, and even more importantly—contrary to what the far right does—this issue must no longer be linked to immigration in order to further stigmatize it.