Madrid, May 19: A Spanish town is to debate calls for a ban on wearing the full-face Islamic veil in public amid growing cross-party opposition to the burqa in the country, a local party said Tuesday.
The council debate in Lerida, a town of some 140,000 inhabitants in north east Catalonia, will take place on May 28.
The Catalan nationalists of the Convergence and Union (CiU) party proposed the ban. About 20 percent of the town’s residents are immigrants.
Lerida mayor Angel Ros, who belongs to the Socialist Party which governs at the national level, also backs a ban, a spokesman for the municipality said.
The town’s legal department is studying the possibility of banning the use of the veil at the local level but the mayor would prefer a wider ban at the regional or national level, he added.
Spain’s Labour and Immigration Minister Celestino Corbacho said Monday he was in favour of a ban on the full veil in work places.
Traditionally a nation that sent immigrants abroad, Spain has seen the number of foreigners living within its borders take off since 1996.
At the start of 2010 there were 5.7 million foreigners in Spain, which has a total population of 46.9 million, according to the National Institute of Statistics.
This includes 746,760 Moroccans, an increase of 4.0 percent on 2009.
France and Belgium are among a number of European countries currently debating a full-face Islamic veil ban in public places.
—Agencies