Muslim migrants in a number of Spanish cities are facing growing difficulties in building mosques or even freely expressing their Muslim identity, especially after the March,2004 bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people and was claimed by an Al-Qaeda-linked militant group.

In Seville , the Great Mosque project was stopped after complaints from local residents. The anti-mosque protests in Seville escalated to the degree that Spanish extremists threw a pig’s head on the construction site of the mosque, believing that would desecrate the site and force Muslims to quit building thereon.