Spain’s royal language watchdog has officially added “Christianophobia” to its dictionary.
The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) has added the term “Christianophobia” to the 24th edition of its official book of words in the Spanish language, defining Christianophobia as an “aversion towards Christianity, Christians or anything Christian.”
The word Islamophobia is already in the dictionary alongside antisemitism.
The Spanish Association of Christian Lawyers, a group that began campaigning for the inclusion of the word in January this year, celebrated the news.
In a statement sent to Crux Now, Polonia Castellanos, president of the group, called it a “historic victory.”
“For us, this is a historic victory, not only for Spanish Christians but for all Spanish speakers. For far too long, hostility and attacks against Christians have been ignored or treated as a minor issue,” she said.
“We found it incomprehensible that the dictionary recognized terms such as Islamophobia and antisemitism, yet did not include a word that explicitly identifies hostility towards Christianity,” she added.
She explained that the organization’s campaign gathered 15,000 signatures in support, and that they formally requested that the RAE include the word in January this year.
“We have always maintained that what cannot be named is much harder to recognize and combat,” Castellanos said.
“The inclusion of Christianophobia will not put an end to attacks against Christians, but it represents a very important step towards raising awareness of this reality and demanding that it receive the same attention as any other form of religious discrimination,” she stated.
The Observatory for Religious Freedom and Freedom of Conscience recorded 306 attacks against religious freedom in Spain in 2025, more than half of which were against Catholics, and 7 in ten against Christians as a whole.
The observatory found that there were 26 attacks against Muslims and 40 against Jews. Jews make up 0.1% of Spain’s population, but 13 percent of the attacks in 2025.
However, Spain’s Public Prosecutor’s Office recorded only two preliminary investigations involving discrimination against Catholics in 2025.
In February this year, the European Union (EU) adopted a resolution urging the European Commission to appoint a coordinator to combat anti-Christian hatred in the EU.
The bishops of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union called for the term “anti-Christian hatred” to be used instead of Christianophobia, “to avoid basing such initiatives on the controversial concept of ‘phobia’.”
The RAE was founded in 1713 to be Spain’s official royal institution dedicated to the Spanish language.
