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Spain has been broadening its halal tourism and food sales, taking advantage of its geographic proximity to Muslim-majority countries in North Africa to supply travel and lodging services.
Spain climbed six places to 16th place in the CrescentRating Global Muslim Travel Index 2021 among the top non-Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) destinations. According to the DinarStandard 2020/21 State of the Global Islamic Economy Report, 2.77 million Muslim tourists visited the country in 2019.
Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on business, but halal industry experts believe Spain is well placed to expand Muslim tourism and food sales.
According to Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE), 48,733 Moroccans visited the country from January to September 2021, far fewer than the 128,468 who visited in 2020 and the 741,855 who visited in 2019. The pandemic also reduced the number of Turkish visitors, which fell from 269,557 in 2019 to 62,837 in 2020 and 48,460 between January and September 2021.
Tomás Guerrero, director of the Dubai government’s Halal Trade and Marketing Centre – and a Spaniard himself – believes the numbers will continue to rise. Along with them, halal food, cosmetics, and even pharmaceuticals are being sold in Spain. According to the Union of Islamic Communities of Spain (UCIDE) and the Andalusian Observatory, there are 2.2 million Muslims in Spain, accounting for about 4% of the population in 2020, with 42 percent being Spanish citizens and 58 percent being immigrants with residence and work permits, mostly from Morocco.
Muslim immigrants from Pakistan, Senegal, Algeria, Nigeria, and Bangladesh also make up a sizable portion of the population. According to DinarStandard data, $6.8 billion was spent in Spain in 2019 on products related to the Muslim lifestyle, including halal food, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and travel, modest apparel and clothing, and Muslim-focused media and recreation.
In the same year, Spanish halal export markets delivered $4.7 billion in halal-certified food, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics to OIC countries, he said.
According to Muhammad Escudero, director of the certification department at the Halal Institute, Spain’s leading halal certification organization, the figure could be higher because some companies with certified products are “resisting” selling them domestically with the halal stamp for fear that they will not be purchased by non-Muslim consumers and because of controversies with animal welfare activists.
While the pandemic slowed growth in Spain’s halal market, Escudero believes sales will increase, particularly in food exports. Some companies, such as Spain’s Calconut SL, are offering new halal products such as nuts with a halal certificate to Muslim-majority markets.
Extenda, the Andalusia trade promotion agency, which is home to much of Spain’s tourism industry, responded that there is no official data on halal food exports. Nonetheless, the number of restaurants in the United States that serve at least one dish made with certified halal meat increased from 121 in 2011 to 344 this year, before leveling off during the pandemic, with 343 in 2020 compared to 340 in 2019. The figures come from Zabihah, a halal restaurant and market directory, according to its founder Shahed Amanullah.
Amanullah predicts a return to “robust growth,” noting that Spain is a key market not only because of its appeal to Muslim tourists and its rising population of North African descent, but also because it is poised to become a major halal meat supplier to the rest of Europe. This is because some European countries, such as Belgium, have imposed restrictions on halal meat production, such as elevated stunning requirements, forcing them to import it to feed their large Muslim populations.
Spain does not face such problems, he said. “Spanish meat-based delicatessen products are world-renowned and halal meat producers in Spain have taken advantage of this to produce halal versions of these products. They are starting to get noticed in markets outside Spain where halal processed meat options do not include traditional European products,” Amanullah said.
eHalal.io, a Singapore-based platform with 230,000 monthly users, saw a “284 percent increase in website traffic from the Spanish market from last year to this year,” according to founder Irwan Shah. According to Shah, the majority of Muslim users in Spain “look for global Muslim food brands.” Around 90% of the market in Spain is made up of small retailers who also sell other groceries, as well as a few supermarket chains that “normally don’t promote” their limited halal products.
Madrid is working to become “one of the European capitals of reference” for emerging Muslim markets, according to Héctor Coronel, director of tourism for the Madrid City Council. He explained that Madrid’s new Strategic Tourism Plan 2021-2023 “focuses on this market due to its characteristics and growth potential,” with plans to improve transportation interconnection between Madrid and Muslim-majority countries by continuing to work with tour operators to tweak their services.
Due to its large population and “openness to the West,” Coronel identified Saudi Arabia as “the country with the most potential” for Madrid, but the city council is also attempting to attract tourists from the UAE, Qatar, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Madrid has been promoting its Muslim heritage, mosques, and halal services for some time.
What is now Spain was once part of a group of Muslim states known as Al-Andalus, which has been romanticized as a golden age of tolerance and reason. Spain can benefit culturally from its Islamic past, which ruled most or all of the country from 711 to 1492. To attract Muslim tourists, the Tourism Institute of Spain promotes several ‘Routes of the Heritage of Al-Andalus’ in Andalusia’s southern region. Incorporating delicatessens, whose items are marketed as halal souvenirs, is part of the offering.
The Halal Institute is starting to work with hotels and restaurants to help them meet Muslim needs, but only a few hotels have become halal certified (in terms of service offerings) so far, and those certifications were not renewed during the pandemic, according to Escudero, who noted that creating “a space or hotel just for one type of clientele” is “hard.”
The Halal Institute is developing a “more flexible” mechanism called the “Authorised Halal point of sale” to promote small businesses with non-certified halal products or services or products certified by other businesses in order to promote a wider range of certification. He told Salaam Gateway that this does not necessarily require certifying the corporation itself, which would incur additional costs and bureaucracy.
Guerrero went on to say that Spain can benefit from the fact that “countries in North Africa and the Middle East import around 60% to 70% of their food.” Those emerging markets, with their younger populations, rising numbers of working women, and digital natives, are an appealing target for the approximately 1,000 Spanish companies that have halal certification. Spain, he believes, is a key player in the halal food market because it exports “a broader spectrum” of products than countries that export more volume but less variety.
