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There are some who throw tomatoes and eggs at us, some who call us a sect, some who call us witches," Francisco José Martinez shouts in a sermon to 300 Spanish Gypsies after a loud round of snappy, flamenco-style worship.

"But let's not be cowards-take up the torch of the gospel and live consecrated, apart and holy."

This is one congregation that does not have to work at living apart. As with most of Spain's 300,000 evangelicals, the marginalized Gypsies of the charismatic Philadelphia Church in Madrid are shunned as religious fringe in predominantly Roman Catholic Spain.

Although new laws have expanded religious liberty, such guarantees have yet to translate into greater acceptance of evangelicals within Spanish society, according to Pedro Tarquis, spokesperson for the Federation of Evangelical Religious Entities of Spain (FEREDE), an umbrella organization.

"Overall, Spain is very antireligious," Tarquis says. "But there is the feeling that if there's going to be religion, the only serious religion to be recognized will be Catholicism."

However, the Protestant population in Spain, which is 90 percent evangelical, is at its highest point in history, Tarquis says. But more than 400 years after Spain led the bloody Counter Reformation, Protestant evangelicals are routinely portrayed in the media as heretical cult members.

LEGAL STANDING:
An estimated 80 percent of evangelical churches closed by force under Gen. Francisco Franco's 36-year regime that ended in 1975. In 1980, evangelicals won full legal rights to worship. In 1992, additional easing of restrictions gave full legal footing to minority religions, including evangelicals. "The problem is that we signed accords with the state, but not with society," says journalist and author Juan Antonio Monroy. "To penetrate the society is more difficult."

Monroy says Spanish society today is more open to evangelicals than during Franco's reign. He recalls that as a newly enlisted soldier in 1952, an army captain threatened to shoot him if he refused to kneel before an image of the Virgin Mary at an open-air mass.

In spite of the new freedoms, evangelical leaders say their growth from 30,000 at Franco's death could have been much greater if not for subtly employed Catholic resistance to the spread of evangelical churches.

"The Catholic church has carried out many campaigns against sects, giving the impression that everything that is not Catholic is a sect," says Tarquis of FEREDE. "Most Spaniards do not distinguish between evangelicals and the scores of sects that have entered Spain in the past decade."

Tarquis says discrimination extends into other areas of Spanish society. The state-run network Television Española has ignored evangelical pleas to be included on talk/debate programs dealing with moral, ethical, or religious themes. "The influential people of Television Española, who come from the Franco era, are Catholic," Tarquis says.

Last year American missionary Greg Jacob found his independent evangelical church in Madrid vilified as a Mexico-based sect on the popular evening news program of commercial network Antenna 3. "No one from Antenna 3 ever contacted me," Jacob says.

Evangelicals say they also experience discrimination firsthand. For example, Iciar Fernandez of Madrid, then age 15, was the only evangelical at a Catholic-run high school when the religion teacher showed an antievangelical video to her class. "The video said the evangelical religion was a sect, that they work through cults and that we're crazy," recalls Fernandez.

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October 7 1996, Vol. 40, No. 11