Evangelical churches in Spain are steadily on the rise, with the traditionally Catholic country seeing 87 new places of worship in the past six months, bringing the total number of evangelical premises to an unprecedented 4,045.
The figures, which show sustained growth of evangelical churches throughout Spain, come from the bi-annual report of the Observatory of Religious Pluralism of the Spanish Justice Ministry on worship places in Spain, and were reported by Evangelical Focus.
The data include Anglican and Adventist denominations' places of worship. But it is evangelical churches that are most on the rise, as is the case across Latin America.
Evangelical Focus noted that during the 8th Spanish Evangelical Congress held in July 2017 in Madrid, it was revealed that there were then 3,800 evangelical places of worship.
The head of 'In Depth Evangelism in Spain', Máximo Álvarez, said the growth trend is 'not only sustained, but on the rise'.
'A church and a half is being planted in Spain every week, six churches a month, that is, 82 churches a year. The figures keep growing thanks to initiatives of church planting that are being carried out by churches and denominations', said Álvarez in an interview with Spanish online news website Protestante Digital.
The figures mirror a major increase in evangelical churches in Latin America, at the expense of the Catholic Church.
Between 1900 and 1960, 90 per cent of Latin Americans were Catholics, but in the last fifty years, that figure fell to 69 per cent, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center in 2014 showing that nearly one in five Latin American countries now consider themselves Protestant.
