Intercultural Policies in Spain and Their Role in Combating Racism and Discrimination

The intercultural policy paradigm has been spreading its influence in recent years as a response to the failures associated with both multicultural and assimilationist integration models. Especially in the local context, this paradigm has inspired different social and political initiatives and has been officially adopted by 145 cities that are currently part of the Intercultural Cities Programme led by the Council of Europe. 25 of these cities are located in Spain, the second country, after Italy, with the most municipalities participating in the programme. In this country, interculturalism generally has a good reputation among most of the political and social spectrum and, over the past few years, different policies at the regional and local level, led by different political parties and social organizations, have been implemented in order to promote intercultural dialogue and create better conditions for living together in cultural diversity contexts. Nevertheless, the intercultural paradigm has also been represented as something “naïve” that do not address the real roots of ethnic and racial discrimination and is mostly focused on sharing cultural expressions and finding common ground among people with different ethnic backgrounds but also with different levels of power and social and political recognition. Through different studies carried out by the Human Rights Institute of the University of Valencia, we address this debate and the current situation of intercultural policies in Spain.