Barcelona Catholics call for citizens to flood Plaça Sant Jaume with personal nativity figures Dec 14 after socialist-led council removes traditional Christmas scene.
Newsroom (03/12/2025 Gaudium Press ) A newly formed Catholic civic group is urging residents to reclaim the city’s historic Plaça de Sant Jaume by bringing their own nativity figures on December 14, in direct response to the Barcelona City Council’s decision to eliminate the traditional large-scale Christmas nativity scene from the square for the second consecutive year.
The Christian Social Current (Corrient Social Cristià), founded in 2024 explicitly to promote the Social Doctrine of the Church without ties to any political party, issued a strongly worded statement denouncing what it describes as a deliberate attempt by “political, cultural and media powers” to downplay the suppression as a mere “anecdotal fact.”
“What gives value to the celebration of the nativity scene is not so much its beauty – which is also important – but rather the symbolic occupation of public space,” the group declared, labeling the veto “serious because of its meaning of exclusion” and part of a wider pattern. As evidence, the organization cited the recent removal of the traditional Mass of the Virgin of Mercy from the official program of La Mercè, Barcelona’s main festival.
The group insists the nativity scene in the square facing City Hall and the Palau de la Generalitat carries a triple significance: religious, popular, and artistic.
Religiously, it is “the expression of the birth of the redeeming Messiah, Jesus Christ.” As popular tradition, the nativity scene is “a deeply rooted custom that transcends the realm of faith” and strengthens collective identity. Artistically, it constitutes “a cultural manifestation of great beauty and heritage value.”
Historical records cited by the Christian Social Current note that large public nativity scenes date back to the eighteenth century in Barcelona, with a permanent installation in Plaça de Sant Jaume since 1940 – a tradition unbroken until the current municipal government took office in 2023.
That government is headed by socialist mayor Jaume Collboni, who holds office with only ten councilors out of forty-one after securing the support of the left-wing Barcelona en Comú (the political heir of Ada Colau’s administration) and, controversially, the center-right People’s Party.
In the eyes of the organizers, “the nativity scene, as a cultural, popular and traditional reality, belongs to the city, not to the City Council, which is only a servant of civil society.” They accuse Mayor Collboni of “waging a cultural war against the Christian symbols of the city with the intention of excluding all Christian manifestations linked to the municipality from the public space.”
The statement concludes by framing the suppression as “an expression of cultural and political supremacism of secularizing and materialistic conceptions, which we reject in the name of democratic pluralism.”
The December 14 citizen action – scheduled for the traditional date when the municipal nativity scene would normally be inaugurated – is presented not as a political demonstration but as a peaceful act of cultural reappropriation, inviting families and individuals of all backgrounds to occupy the square with their own figures of the Holy Family, shepherds, and Magi.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from ACI Prensa
Related Images:
