A2 · Elementary
8 min
religion and societyculturehistoryeuropean affairs
God's Country Is Losing Its Religion
Un papa americano en el país de la Inquisición
Pope Leo XIV has arrived in Spain for the first papal visit in fifteen years, to a country that went from the most Catholic in Europe to one of its most secular within a single generation. Fletcher and Octavio dig into the Church's grip on Spanish history, Franco's national Catholicism, and what this visit actually means now.
El papa León XIV llega a España por primera vez en quince años, un país que pasó de ser el más católico de Europa a uno de los más seculares del continente. Fletcher y Octavio exploran la historia de la Iglesia en España, el legado de Franco y lo que significa esta visita hoy.
5 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| el papa | the Pope | El papa visita España esta semana. |
| la iglesia | the church | La iglesia está en el centro de la ciudad. |
| antes | before / in the past | Antes, muchas personas van a la iglesia. |
| la patata / la papa | the potato (patata in Spain; papa in Latin America) | En España comemos patatas. En México comen papas. |
| el migrante | the migrant | Muchos migrantes llegan a España por el mar. |
Here is something I have been turning over all week.
The first American pope in history just landed in Spain, and it's the first papal visit there in fifteen years.
And Spain, of all places.
Sí.
Yes.
El papa León XIV está en España.
Pope Leo XIV is in Spain.
Es una visita muy importante.
It is a very important visit.
Leo XIV, born Robert Prevost, from Chicago.
Six days, several cities.
And the AP story specifically mentioned the Sagrada Família, which tells you something about the optics they're going for.
La Sagrada Família es muy famosa.
The Sagrada Família is very famous.
Está en Barcelona.
It is in Barcelona.
Es una iglesia muy grande.
It is a very big church.
And still unfinished after a hundred and forty years, which I find almost philosophically perfect for a building commissioned by the Church.
Gaudí es el arquitecto.
Gaudí is the architect.
Trabaja mucho.
He works a lot.
Pero no termina.
But he does not finish.
Muere en 1926.
He dies in 1926.
Gets hit by a tram in Barcelona, right.
But let's back up, because I think people outside of Spain maybe don't fully grasp how deep the Church runs in that country's history.
Octavio, when I say Spain and Catholicism, where does your mind go first?
España es muy católica.
Spain is very Catholic.
Tiene mucha historia con la iglesia.
It has a lot of history with the church.
Mucha, mucha historia.
A lot, a lot of history.
The polite way to say the Inquisition.
La Inquisición, sí.
The Inquisition, yes.
Y también la Reconquista.
And also the Reconquista.
La iglesia es central en todo.
The church is central in everything.
Seven hundred years of pushing Islam south, and then expelling Jews and Muslims in 1492, the same year Columbus sailed.
The Church wasn't just involved in Spanish identity, it basically was Spanish identity for centuries.
Sí.
Yes.
Y después, Franco usa la iglesia también.
And later, Franco also uses the church.
La iglesia apoya a Franco.
The church supports Franco.
That's the part that I find the most fascinating, honestly.
Franco's regime had this official doctrine called National Catholicism.
Being Spanish and being Catholic were legally, culturally, practically the same thing.
The Church ran the schools.
It ran civil registration.
Divorce was illegal.
This lasted until 1975.
Todos van a la iglesia.
Everyone goes to church.
Es normal.
It is normal.
Es la vida en España antes.
That is life in Spain before.
Not just normal, essentially mandatory if you wanted to function socially.
And then Franco dies, democracy arrives, and Spain moves faster culturally than almost any country in modern history.
Divorce legalized in 1981.
Abortion rights.
And then same-sex marriage in 2005, before Germany, before the United States.
España cambia mucho y muy rápido.
Spain changes a lot and very fast.
Los jóvenes no son muy religiosos ahora.
Young people are not very religious now.
The surveys are striking.
Around sixty percent of Spaniards today call themselves Catholic, but fewer than twenty percent attend mass regularly.
And among people under thirty, the numbers are even lower.
This is a country that went from mandatory mass to majority secular within living memory.
Muchas personas dicen: soy católico.
Many people say: I am Catholic.
Pero no van a la iglesia.
But they do not go to church.
Es cultural, no religioso.
It is cultural, not religious.
That distinction matters.
Baptized Catholic, culturally Catholic, holidays and weddings and funerals Catholic.
But practicing?
That's a smaller group every year.
So what does a papal visit mean in that context?
Para muchas personas, el papa es un símbolo.
For many people, the Pope is a symbol.
Es historia.
He is history.
Es cultura española.
He is Spanish culture.
Right, and I think that's actually a really sharp way to frame it.
The Pope's arrival isn't just a religious event, it's a cultural event.
The same way the World Cup Final is a cultural event even for people who don't follow football week to week.
Sí.
Yes.
Y este papa es diferente.
And this Pope is different.
Es americano.
He is American.
Habla español bien.
He speaks Spanish well.
That's a genuinely unusual thing.
Leo XIV spent years as a missionary in Peru, led the Augustinians in Rome, and his Spanish is not tourist Spanish, it's fluent.
Which is fascinating when you think about him arriving in Spain as, technically, the head of the universal Church but also someone who learned their language across the Atlantic.
El español de América es diferente.
The Spanish of America is different.
España escucha un papa con acento diferente.
Spain hears a Pope with a different accent.
Which, knowing how Spaniards feel about Latin American Spanish, is a whole thing.
El español de España es el mejor español.
Spanish from Spain is the best Spanish.
Esto es obvio.
This is obvious.
There it is.
But seriously, the last papal visit was Benedict XVI in 2011, and that was for World Youth Day in Madrid.
An enormous event, millions of young Catholics from around the world.
Do you remember that?
Sí.
Yes.
Muchas personas van a Madrid.
Many people go to Madrid.
Es un evento muy grande.
It is a very big event.
Mucha gente joven.
Many young people.
And there were also significant protests that week.
Secular groups in Madrid objecting to public money being spent on the visit.
Which tells you Spain in 2011 was already a very different place from Spain in, say, 1965.
Hay personas que no quieren la iglesia en la política.
There are people who do not want the church in politics.
Es normal en España ahora.
This is normal in Spain now.
The Church still has significant institutional presence, though.
Private Catholic schools educate something like a third of Spanish children.
Church-affiliated hospitals, charities.
It's not like the institution vanished, it just lost its monopoly on public life.
La iglesia tiene escuelas, hospitales, muchas cosas.
The church has schools, hospitals, many things.
Tiene mucho dinero también.
It also has a lot of money.
And that's a political conversation in Spain right now too.
There's an ongoing debate about Church property, Church tax exemptions, the concordat with the Vatican that dates from the Franco era.
This visit lands right in the middle of all of that.
El gobierno habla de esto.
The government talks about this.
Hay muchas opiniones.
There are many opinions.
No es fácil.
It is not easy.
And Leo XIV has signaled he cares about migration, about poverty.
Spain's southern coast, the Canary Islands, these are major arrival points for people crossing from West Africa.
I wonder if that comes up during the visit.
El papa habla de los migrantes.
The Pope talks about migrants.
España tiene muchos migrantes.
Spain has many migrants.
Llegan por el mar.
They arrive by sea.
The Canary Islands saw record arrivals in recent years.
Tens of thousands of people.
And the Spanish government has been under real pressure about how it handles that.
If Leo XIV makes it a focal point, that puts the Church directly into a live policy debate.
El papa tiene una voz importante.
The Pope has an important voice.
Las personas escuchan.
People listen.
No solo los católicos.
Not only Catholics.
That's probably the most interesting thing about Leo XIV specifically.
He's operating in a moment where the papacy's moral authority on social issues might actually exceed its religious authority in places like Spain.
People who'd never set foot in a church will pay attention to what he says about inequality.
Sí.
Yes.
Muchas personas no creen en Dios.
Many people do not believe in God.
Pero escuchan al papa sobre la pobreza.
But they listen to the Pope about poverty.
You know, Octavio, something's been nagging at me this whole conversation.
When you've been saying el papa, how do you explain to a Spanish learner that the same word also means potato in some places?
Sí, es verdad.
Yes, it is true.
En muchos países, la papa es la patata.
In many countries, la papa is the potato.
En España decimos patata.
In Spain we say patata.
So if you're in Mexico or Argentina and you say el papa, you might mean the Pope, but if you say la papa, you might mean a potato.
And Spain just sidesteps the whole problem by using a different word entirely.
Exacto.
Exactly.
El Papa, con P grande, es el papa de Roma.
The Pope, with a capital P, is the Pope of Rome.
La papa, con p pequeña, es la patata.
La papa, with a lowercase p, is the potato.
El artículo es diferente también.
The article is different too.
El papa, la papa.
El papa, la papa.
So the gender of the article is doing a lot of work there.
El papa, masculine, the Pope.
La papa, feminine, the potato.
Which means a Latin American learner has to track both the article and the capitalization, and if you get it wrong in conversation you've just compared the head of the Catholic Church to a root vegetable.
Fletcher, tú puedes hacer este error.
Fletcher, you could make this mistake.
Sé honesto.
Be honest.
I have absolutely made worse errors.
Leo XIV just arrived in Spain.
El papa.
Not la papa.
I will hold onto that distinction like a life raft.