Spain

Convivencia

coexistence; living together across difference

Resilience Mechanism

Resilient coexistence does not arise from natural harmony. It depends on rights, rules and institutions that enable people with different identities, views and historical memories to remain within a shared civic space even during serious disagreement.

What It Means

In this context, Convivencia literally means “living together” or “coexistence”. In Spanish usage, the concept has two connected meanings. The first belongs to historical debates about relations among Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities in medieval Iberia. The second belongs to contemporary democratic language about shared life in a society divided by religion, language, origin, regional identity and political outlook.

For resilience, its significance lies not in the promise of conflict-free coexistence, but in the capacity to preserve common rules and spaces of interaction when difference creates tension.

How It Works in a Crisis

During political polarisation, migration-related tension or conflict over memory, religion and regional identity, convivencia is sustained through concrete civic mechanisms.

Laws protect equal rights, schools establish shared rules, municipal services maintain equal access, and mediation helps address disputes before they become exclusion or violence. The mechanism is not the removal of disagreement. It is the ability to keep disagreement within a common democratic framework in which people may remain in conflict without denying one another’s right to belong.

What happens

Polarisation and conflict between groups
What we focus on

Equal rights and shared democratic rules
How we act

Mediation, access and rules for coexistence
What it gives

Disagreement without exclusion or violence

A Lesson for Other Countries

The Spanish experience shows that a plural society does not become resilient simply by asking people to be tolerant.

Coexistence requires institutions, procedures and everyday practices that protect equal rights, provide channels for disagreement and prevent majorities from pushing minorities out of shared civic life. Differences do not have to disappear.

The task of a resilient society is to ensure that they do not destroy the possibility of living, learning, working and making decisions together. Coexistence must be organised, protected and repeatedly repaired.

Coexistence must be organised, protected and repeatedly repaired.

Where It Comes From

The concept entered modern historical debate through the work of Spanish scholar Américo Castro, who lived in exile after the Spanish Civil War. He used convivencia to interpret the complex relations among Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities in medieval Iberia. The term later became the subject of sustained scholarly debate.

Some researchers used it to describe cultural interaction, while others warned that it could obscure hierarchy, persecution and violence. After Spain’s transition to democracy beginning in 1975, convivencia also became part of public language in education, municipal government, integration and anti-discrimination policy.

What It Looks Like Today

In contemporary Spain, convivencia is present in the language of schools, municipalities, citizenship, integration and anti-discrimination. Examples include school convivencia work, responses to racism and xenophobia, mediation and policies that protect equal participation in a plural society.

The contemporary framework includes not only anti-racism but also policies against discrimination towards LGBTQ+ people. Convivencia should therefore be presented as a broader civic and anti-discrimination framework, not only as an interreligious or migration-related concept.

Limits of the Concept

Convivencia should not be romanticised as a harmonious “golden age of three cultures” or presented as evidence of Spanish society’s natural tolerance.

Medieval Iberia was a space of cultural interaction, but also of hierarchy, coercion, persecution, expulsions and violence. The concept should therefore retain its critical complexity and should not be used to obscure contemporary racism, xenophobia, discrimination or social inequality. Coexistence has meaning only when it includes recognition of conflict, protection of rights and accountability for discrimination and exclusion.

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