Radiography of Religious Minorities in Spain: an Estimation of their Size and Characteristics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54790/rccs.114Keywords:
religion, minorities, confessions, religious beliefs, methodology, inmigration, statistical sources, quantification, Muslims, CatholicsAbstract
This article studies religious minorities in Spain using different data sources. On the one hand, it analyses six nationally representative opinion surveys carried out between 2018 and 2023 and discusses their methodological limitations. According to these surveys, bet-ween 4% and 6.3% of Spanish residents of legal age belong to a non-Catholic religion. On the other hand, data from the EPA are used, whose analysis suggests that the actual percen-tage of religious minorities may be twice as high. Including minors, the figure could reach 12.6% of the population in 2024 (6.1 million people), of which 2.6 million would be Muslim. The opinion surveys analysed show a unique socio-demographic profile of religious mino-rities. However, given the problems of statistical under-representation of this group, new, more accurate and adequate data sources are urgently needed.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Jacobo Muñoz Comet, Juan Ignacio Martínez Pastor

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Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades
Grant numbers PID2020-114702RA-I00