Educació will comply with the ruling requiring a school in Palma to offer Islamic teaching.

PalmThe Minister of Education and Universities, Antoni Vera, assured that his department will abide by the ruling of the High Court of Justice of the Balearic Islands (TSJIB), which recognizes the right of a doll to receive Islamic instruction in a school in Palma. He announced that the text is being studied and that the resolution's relevance is being sought. Vera expressed his respect for the high court's ruling while also announcing that the agreement with the Islamic Commission on this matter is under review. The ruling opens the door for Islamic instruction, which is already offered in some schools in the Balearic Islands, to also be extended to Palma.

The dispute began in June 2024, when a student's father requested that the Ministry of Education allow his daughter to take the subject of Islamic Religion. The request went unanswered, and he was not given any information on how to proceed. According to the Court's ruling, "the Administration has not provided the appellants with any information on the regulatory mechanisms that would satisfy the legitimate right to religious education." The Court notes that this lack of response and information constitute a violation of Article 27.3 of the Spanish Constitution, which guarantees parents the right to "have their children receive religious and moral education in accordance with their own convictions."

Expired Agreement

The government has argued that, in fact, the father did not formalize the request for his two children to receive Islamic instruction. However, the parent was part of a collective petition with other families in similar circumstances, and in this case, only his daughter was affected. For this reason, the Court partially ruled in favor of the claimant and concluded that the procedure regarding the doll was correct. The ruling establishes that the administration should have indicated any errors or missing documentation and provided a period of time within which they could be corrected.

The Regional Ministry has argued that the agreement signed in 2019 between Education and the Islamic Commission of Spain, which allowed for the teaching of Islamic instruction with public funding, "expired on September 30, 2023," during Francina Armengol's second term in office. Since then, according to the Regional Ministry, "there is no instrument regulating the teaching of this subject in public schools in the Balearic Islands." However, it acknowledges that the subject has continued to be offered in some centers, without specifying which ones, nor providing information on how it is planned to organize it for the 2025-2026 academic year.