Spain records 6.6% total-population male circumcision prevalence (Morris et al. 2016) — the highest among the Catholic-majority Southern European countries examined in this research batch, reflecting its comparatively large modern Muslim immigrant population. It would be tempting to read this as a legacy of Al-Andalus, the Muslim-ruled territory that governed the Iberian Peninsula from 711 to 1492 and whose population peaked at an estimated 5.5 million. But no evidence supports a continuous circumcision tradition bridging that era to the present: the 1492 Alhambra Decree expelled Spain's Jews, and the Moriscos — forcibly converted Muslims — were themselves expelled between 1609 and 1614, leaving a demographic rupture of some three centuries before Spain's current, entirely immigration-driven Muslim community took shape.
Spain records 6.6% total-population male circumcision prevalence (Morris et al. 2016, PMC4772313) — the highest figure among the Catholic-majority Southern European countries examined alongside it in this research batch (compared with Italy's 2.6% and Greece's 4.7%). Spanish Catholic tradition, like its counterparts elsewhere in Southern Europe, does not include circumcision as a routine practice; the custom in modern Spain is confined to the Muslim immigrant population and a small, modern, reconstituted Jewish community.
It would be natural to read this figure against the backdrop of Al-Andalus — the Muslim-ruled territory that governed much of the Iberian Peninsula from the 711 CE conquest until the fall of Granada in 1492, with a Muslim population estimated to have peaked at roughly 5.5 million people in the 12th century. But this research found no evidence of a continuous circumcision tradition bridging that historical period to the present day. The 1492 Alhambra Decree expelled Spain's Jewish population outright. The Moriscos — Muslims forced to convert to Christianity following the fall of Granada — were themselves subsequently expelled from the various kingdoms of the Iberian Union between 1609 and 1614. This represents a near-total demographic rupture: modern Spain's circumcising communities are not survivors of Al-Andalus but are instead the product of 20th and 21st century immigration, principally from Morocco.
Precisely how large that modern Muslim population is remains genuinely contested. The Union of Islamic Communities of Spain (UCIDE), in its 2024 annual report, estimates approximately 2.5 million Muslims in Spain — roughly 5% of the national population. A separate compilation by Statista, dated January 2025, puts the figure at approximately 1.085 million, broken down as 880,000 of Moroccan origin, 100,000 of Pakistani origin, and 83,000 of Senegalese origin. These two widely-cited estimates differ by a factor of more than two, and this research could not resolve the discrepancy to a single authoritative figure — it is presented here honestly as an unresolved range rather than asserted as settled. What is well documented is that the Moroccan-origin community is Spain's largest immigrant-origin group by nationality, exceeding 1.1 million people, with nearly 50,000 gaining Spanish citizenship through naturalisation in 2024 alone.
No Spanish statute specifically governs non-therapeutic male circumcision. Female genital mutilation, by contrast, is criminalised under the Spanish Penal Code with extraterritorial application — a provision designed to prevent circumvention of the law by performing the procedure abroad, given that some of Spain's immigrant communities originate from FGM-practicing countries. This is an entirely separate legal framework and is not conflated with male circumcision here.
Spain has an HIV adult prevalence of approximately 0.70% (2024) — notably higher than most of its Western European neighbours, though still reflecting a low-level, concentrated rather than generalised epidemic. Spain is not among the 15 WHO Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC) priority countries, which are restricted to Eastern and Southern Africa. No Spain-specific circumcision complication case was identified in this research.
