The nearly 24 mosques that currently exist in the Basque country are insufficient to meet the needs of a growing Muslim population. Adding to the well-known difficulty in getting the necessary permits to open new places of worship, the Muslim communities are now faced with being a peon at the onset of municipal election campaigns. The attempt of mediation by some neighbourhood associations so as to achieve consensus between City Council proposals, Muslim communities and angry neighbours has been unsuccessful, but it becomes even more difficult as the Popular Party takes any opportunity to accuse the current government of not providing the positive and necessary answers to neighbourhood associations (read Spanish and Catholic).
