Jalid —born Joaquín in Seville 67 years ago— does not want to be photographed next to the remains of pig’s feet with which some have greeted the project of the future great mosque of Seville for which he has been fighting for 20 years. One morning, several hooves and a ham bone (not a trace of the prized meat) appeared at the entrance of the 3,000 square meter plot where the Seville Mosque Foundation, of which Jalid is founder and vice president, wants to build a large 4,000 square meter building (for the mosque a little over a thousand) with a 30-meter minaret, a mosque, but much more than a mosque.
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“What we want to do is more than a mosque, an Islamic cultural center that includes everyone,” explains Jalid, with an unmistakably Spanish surname, Nieto.
His mother was named Carmen, she was a Catholic “with very deep values” and the son, who was first Joaquín and today is Jalid, was born in Cortijo de Cuarto, a stone’s throw from Seville city. That is why he rebels against those who say that they, the Muslims promoting the construction of the mosque, are strangers who want to Islamize the very Noble and very Loyal (as their coat of arms says), as well as very Catholic and traditional, city of Seville.
“We are from Seville and we want to be part of the life of Seville,” proclaims Jalid in front of the fence that completely surrounds the plot he himself found, almost by chance, at the end of 2024 in Polígono Sur, one of the most depressed areas of the Andalusian capital.
He called the phone number on the ‘for sale’ sign and it turned out that the owner was the Mormon church of Seville which, in turn, had acquired the land from the Junta de Andalucía. For 800,000 euros (plus VAT), donated by the Malaysian government, they acquired the land and got to work designing the great Seville mosque with renowned architects. The project, for which they already have the building permit and which has a budget of about 10 million, bears the signature of the prestigious Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra, who found inspiration in the Alcázar or the Giralda, born as a minaret.
But neither the conception as a cultural center nor the architectural endorsement of Vázquez Consuegra convince those who oppose the project, the “new crusaders”, says Jalid referring to the Christian knights whom Pope Urban II entrusted in 1095 to liberate Jerusalem.
It is Vox, the far-right party, that has declared war on the Polígono Sur mosque. First it was their councilors in the Seville City Council —where their votes are essential for the minority PP government— and then their parliamentarians until Santiago Abascal himself took the lead of the anti-Muslim crusade with the argument that the project is nothing but an attempt at “Islamization” of the city, which risks losing its identity markers.
Not only that, but they have stirred from Abascal’s party the ghost of terrorist fanaticism. Specifically, the municipal spokesperson of Vox, Gonzalo García de Polavieja, evoked the fear that Polígono Sur of Seville could become “the Molenbeek” of Seville.
This is not a trivial or casual comparison. From the populous Brussels neighborhood —up to 80% Muslim majority— came some of the perpetrators of the jihadist attacks that brutally struck Paris in 2015 —the attack on the Bataclan hall and other points, with 130 dead— and the Belgian capital in 2016, with 35 deaths at the hands of Islamic State followers.
Almost two thousand years later, this crusade does not have, by far, the blessing of the Catholic Church and even Archbishop José Ángel Saiz Meneses has distanced himself saying it is “a matter of rights and freedoms.”
The rights are precisely those invoked by the local government of José Luis Sanz to defend the approval that, this very week, it has given to the building permit. Everything is in order, they insist from the Seville City Council, and even the neighbors of Polígono Sur have publicly shown support for building the mosque that Jalid has dreamed of since this century began. Although the path to the excavators and cranes, admits the vice president of the Seville Mosque Foundation, is by no means clear.
Vox is willing to take its crusade to the very gates of Jerusalem using, for this, its legal artillery (administrative appeals and lawsuits included) and its legion of followers who have already made social networks an alternative battlefield where there are no limits and xenophobic and hateful messages against the Muslim community are spread under the protective cloak of digital anonymity.
At the rally held the same day the building permit was approved, last 27th, near the mosque plot, the presence of far-right elements was already detected, although, for now, the spark of social discontent does not ignite.
None of this has caught Jalid by surprise and he accuses the new crusaders, those of Vox, of essentially seeking “electoral gains” with their opposition to the Islamic cultural center project that he, among others, champions.
When asked how he feels hearing that what they really intend is to “Islamize” Seville or that the mosque will attract jihadist fundamentalists, Jalid sighs and offers a reflection: “One of the lines chosen by Abascal’s people is the oppression of the stranger, but we are not strangers in our own land.” And he recalls that “throwing pig remains or blood in establishments not only Islamic but also Jewish, is a hate crime.”
In some way, he adds, “some Sevillians want to establish, without consulting the rest, that they are the only ones who represent Seville.”
Because in Seville, he emphasizes, there are “many people who consider themselves crusaders of this time” and they are not only in Vox, he says. He also talks about deeply rooted institutions in Sevillian society, military and religious orders with influential members determined to keep their swords raised against a Muslim threat that does not exist. Because crusades and religious wars have long been left behind. At least in these lands, he points out.
In any case, and despite the pig’s feet, the hatred on social networks, and Vox’s declared war, Jalid believes that “times have changed” and trusts that “common sense and reason will prevail,” so that in six months, nine at most, the excavators can start the underground parking that the Polígono Sur project includes and in two and a half years, three at most, the voice of the muezzin can be heard from the minaret conceived by Vázquez Consuegra.
He trusts, finally, that history will not repeat itself because this is not the first project to build a great mosque in Seville. In the last twenty years there have been at least two other serious attempts comparable to the initiative promoted by the Seville Mosque Foundation, which, in turn, is part of the Islamic Community of Spain.
The most recent was in 2016 on a plot in the Sevilla Este neighborhood. The promoter was another, the Islamic Community, and a cultural and also commercial center was announced with great fanfare. It had the financial backing of the United Arab Emirates, but the controversy it generated, on the eve of municipal elections, condemned the initiative, which was overturned by the then mayor, the socialist Juan Espadas.
Before this, in 2006, the Seville Mosque Foundation —the same one now leading the initiative in Polígono Sur— was about to lay the foundation for the first great mosque of Seville on a public plot granted in the Los Bermejales neighborhood.
“We wanted to be in the city center and we felt they were pushing us out,” recalls Jalid, who, as now, was at the forefront of the project.
The initiative encountered, he recalls, fierce opposition from the neighborhood association called Bermejales 2000, which tried to sabotage the foundation’s plans by all means.
“We were told everything and I had to go through my neighborhood warning those who knew me about what was happening,” he says.
The Los Bermejales mosque collapsed before a single brick was laid and some more attempts in other locations, such as the San Jerónimo neighborhood, met the same fate.
In these 20 years “we have reflected a lot and have done self-criticism.” Hence the change of model from a mosque to a cultural and service center that can be a boost for a depressed neighborhood. Meanwhile, in this time, ties have been woven with Sevillian society that, Jalid believes, will make the difference.
All the same, he sees similarities between what happened in 2006 and what is happening now and assures that there are far-right activists who were behind the rejection of the mosque “who today are in Vox.”
Jalid recalls that in the city there are more than a dozen Muslim religious premises “that have never caused problems” and recalls the maxim carved on the Puerta del Perdón of the Cathedral: “Al mulku lilah al baka lilah.” That is, “everything belongs to God.”
