Public institutions and the accommodation of religious diversity: The case of hospitals and prisons in Spain

The management of religious diversity is becoming a crucial element to ensure social cohesion and good governance in contemporary societies. The rise of migration flows has led to a context of greater religious diversity and new and urgent challenges have emerged in this area in recent years. This phenomenon has highlighted the need to rethink the models of accommodation of religious minorities in public institutions.

The overall objective of this research is to analyze the challenges that the growth of religious diversity raises for hospitals and prisons and to examine the main strategies developed to accommodate religious minorities in these two types of confinement institutions. Our hypothesis are: 1) The model of accommodation of religious diversity in public institutions in Spain is tending to a pluralistic one. Public institutions are not eliminating/erasing religion, but they are taking into account and giving possibilities of practice to religious minorities which are nowadays gaining public presence. 2) The presence of religious diversity in hospitals and prisons puts into question the historical monopoly of the Catholic Church in Spain. In this sense, we state that the Catholic Church is resisting to lose its privileges in such institutions. The research, based on interviews to staff (directors, social workers...) of the institutions and religious leaders, compares two Spanish regions: Catalonia and Andalusia. The analytical dimensions considered are: a) religious assistance that patients and prisoners received; b) places of worship inside the centres; and c) possibilities to carry out daily religious practices.