‘Catholic Tinder’ or sources of conversion? The new movements sweeping Spain

Can Catholic pop music and ‘impact retreats’ help turn back the secular tide?

Castelldefels is a sleepy beach town around 20km from Barcelona. It has miles of golden sand, and in the sweltering summer its beaches are full of people enjoying the azure Mediterranean Sea.

The main church, Santa María de Castelldefels, is on a pleasant plaza and on a Sunday is full of the typical sights of a church in Europe today: retirees, a few families, and a smattering of young people.

Santa María de Castelldefels. Credit: Christian Annerel via Google.

The parish priest, Fr. Juan Vargas, is realistic about the declining role of the Church in Spain. He told The Pillar: “Spain, like all of Europe, is a place where Christianity is socially disappearing and becoming just a memory.”

His comments reflected those made in April this year by Archbishop Luis Javier Argüello Garcia, Archbishop of Valladolid and president of the Spanish episcopal conference, who said: “The time has passed from what was previously said for centuries, when we said: I’m Catholic because I was born in Spain.”

The archbishop bemoaned the fact that of the 23,000 baptismal fonts spread across Spain’s 22,921 parishes, many of them “have no water.”

In his view, he said, this amounts to fewer strong Christian communities which can “help the Holy Spirit engender new Christians.”

Yet, against that backdrop, Fr. Vargas said he has a newfound hope.

His parish has recently introduced a retreat by a group called Effetá — “be opened” — which started in Colombia and organizes weekend parish retreats for people aged between 18 and 30.

Sometimes called “impact retreats,” the organizers guard closely the details of what happens to increase the effect for participants.

The website of the Spanish section explains that the retreats are “testimonial and experiential” and aim to help people have “a first encounter with Christ.” Parishes across Spain, including in Madrid, Mallorca, Barcelona, Sevilla, and Girona, have adopted the initiative.

Enthused by the “very positive” impact, which has “enriched” his flock, Vargas said that up to 60 young people from his parish participate in the retreats.

He added: “It’s one more sign that God does not abandon His Church and, in every era, raises up new paths so that young people and adults may encounter Him.”

Effetá is not the only initiative making waves. There is also Hakuna, Emaús, The Conjugal Love Project, a Spanish diocesan program to help married couples and families, and many more.

But when speaking before the plenary meeting of the Spanish bishops in April, Archbishop Argüello sounded a note of caution about such initiatives. While he acknowledged that they “make an impact along with the invitation to continue” in the Christian life, he also emphasized challenges.

Touching on the criticism that the new apostolic groups place too much emphasis on an emotional experience, and not enough on the sometimes arduous journey of the Christian life, the archbishop said they face the struggle of “transforming an emotional experience into virtue, of finding specific paths of growth that go beyond recreating the initial impact.”

There are other problems, too.

Within Catholic circles in Barcelona, for example, Effetá is often playfully referred to as “Catholic Tinder” because of its reputation for a place people go to meet dates, instead of meeting the Lord.

With Spanish Catholicism — a historical bastion of the faith and the homeland of saints such as St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Dominic, and St. Teresa of Avila — in urgent need of rejuvenation, are these movements capable of igniting a renewal? Or do they provide an emotional high that feels good, but doesn’t produce lasting Catholic discipleship?

Facing facts

Fr. Emili Marles heads up the evangelization efforts of the Diocese of Terrassa, in the ecclesiastical province of Barcelona.

The man who brought LifeTeen from America into the parishes of Spain, Marles is knowledgeable about the effectiveness of the new movements. When he spoke to The Pillar, he said any successful Catholic endeavor in Spain must reckon with a painful reality: in his view, the country can no longer be considered meaningfully Christian.

To illustrate his point, Marles said that in 1985 around 85% of the children born that year were baptized. Now, he said, around 25% of the children are baptized. While Catalonia is more secularized than other parts of the country, such as Andalusia or Madrid, Spain was very much part of the “European movement” towards secularization.

Earlier this month, Funcas Foundation, which analyses the secularization of Spain, released a report that found that only 55% of Spaniards over the age of 18 identify as Catholic. In the 1970s it was 90%. Among the young, the figures are starker: in 2002, 60% of those aged 18-29 identified as Catholic, while in 2024 only 32% did so.

Marles said that “most of the parishes in Spain don’t realise that it’s not a Christian culture, and we are a multicultural society. If we think in this society that everyone is Catholic then we are very wrong. We need to know the roots if we are going to evangelize effectively.”

For Marles, effective evangelization must recognise these new “roots” — something the new movements get right. The fact that the view of the Church in Spain is tainted by past association with General Franco means that a willingness to try fresh ideas is particularly useful.

“The new movements are like a little seed that you plant, and there is a change in these movements as they are driven by parishioners… Effetá and things like LifeTeen are in the parishes. I was the person who introduced LifeTeen to Spain, and now there are 200 parishes in Spain that follow LifeTeen,” he said.

“The parishes that established LifeTeen are doing well. It is not a charismatic movement but it is a parishioner-based method.”

Effetá is a youth-focused offshoot of Emaús. Similar to Effetá, but aimed at adults, Emaús started in Miami and is now well-integrated into many Spanish parishes. The movement arranges impact retreats for adults, although their secrets are less closely guarded. A weekend with Emaús involves prayer, meditation, testimonies, and Mass.

There is also Hakuna, a movement of Catholics in their 20s and 30s started by a Spanish priest. Since its founding in 2013, it has spread to 40 Spanish cities, another 10 European countries, six Latin American countries, plus South Korea, and Boston. The movement is known for its Catholic pop music, which aims to show “radical joy,” — and for social gatherings with an emphasis on community.

Pope Francis once described it as a “great Eucharistic family.”

Marles said that because of the growth of these new movements, with their emphasis on having a personal relationship with God, “there is a renewal of young people in Spain. It’s not a very large number but there is a real change if we compare this to 20 years ago.”

He said that “they have a real encounter with Jesus Christ and they feel how their lives are changing because of their relationship with Jesus.”

Evidence of a small revival is difficult to quantify, particularly as the groups are so new. However, in the second half of 2024, Effetá listed 47 retreats on their website, which usually get between 60 and 100 attendees. In 2025, there are 77 planned. Hakuna has over 100,000 followers on Instagram and in 2022 hosted a concert in Madrid that drew 8,000 people.

Marles said he was hopeful for the future: “We can already see the fruits of the Holy Spirit, and we need to celebrate these fruits.”

Know them by their fruits

Roman Jané, 31, is a seminarian in the Archdiocese of Barcelona, and he said for most of his life he had an arid, dry faith that was dwindling by the year: “I come from a family of believers, but my relationship with faith was essentially one of tradition and custom. I trusted that God existed and sang to Him my list of requests and thanksgivings.”

“That ‘faith’ faded over time, with life’s first setbacks, to the point of being almost nonexistent, and for more than six years I was very far from God.”

However, that changed when in his mid-20s he encountered Effetá and Hakuna: “At 24, I accidentally fell into an Effetá retreat, and that’s where I came to know the love of God.”

He said they were instrumental in his decision to join the seminary two years ago: “Effetá and Hakuna have been the two realities that the Lord has given me to return to and remain in Him. These are the ones that, directing my life to Christ, allowed me to consider my vocation and my path to holiness.”

Speaking of his fellow seminarians, he said it is hard to say the precise reason why someone entered the seminary but that “the reality is that many of my classmates, and many others from the rest of Spain, have experienced Effetá, Hakuna, or Emaús before entering the seminary.”

Jané is not alone when he credits the new movements with helping reveal a vocation.

Jan Chamoun, 28, and Adriana Rio, 26, are getting married in April next year, which they both say is due to an Effetá retreat.

Rio said that “the movements played a very important role in our decision to get married. I believe that if we hadn’t taken part in these movements, we wouldn’t have the relationship we have today. We met at Effetá — something that, without us realizing, has shaped our paths and our decision to get married.”

Chamoun concurred with this, adding: “You could say it was something of God, the way we met felt like more than just coincidence. Ultimately, the movement has deeply affected the way we live our relationship.

“It would also be fair to say that the values and faith that Effetá has given us are what have helped us and what we try to maintain within our relationship.”

Yet, it’s not just their coming marriage that they credit to Effetá, but also the total transformation of their lives — Rio said that before she “didn’t even know God,” while Chamoun said he went from atheism to faith.

He said: “It was a turning point. Before discovering these movements — Effetá in my case, to be specific — I was an atheist and didn’t live out religion at all the way I do now. Now I enjoy it, and I base my values on God and Christianity.”

It is fruits such as these that Marles wants to see celebrated because, in his words: “We need to show people that it’s possible, so that more parishes and more people become open to this new era of ministry”.

How to turn emotion into virtue

As Archbishop Argüello noted, the movements have the challenge of turning an emotional high into a substantial life of faith.

Fr. Marles agreed with the archbishop’s concerns and said that these retreats and communities are just a “first step”.

He added: “But we don’t have the next steps in that way and we need to create these next steps for people. I like to do a comparison with the language schools: you have A1, A2, B1, B2, etc. I see these retreats as A1: it’s a beginning. This is where we have difficulties.”

Marles credited the Sycamore Course, which started in Britain and has groups in Spain, as a good next step, which details more of the specifics of the faith. He said Catholics drawn in by apostolic movements need to understand “the systematics of the faith. You need to go deeper into the faith. Once you have this gift for this first impact, you need to look into other places as to how to go deeper and be inspired.”

Roman Jané also agreed that this was a pitfall for many encountering the Church properly for the first time through the movements: “Many approach these realities through feeling, thus linking Christ and his love with the experience of feeling. And sometimes, when the feeling disappears, many abandon the path of faith or focus on recreating what they experienced.”

To Chamoun, a path is needed which leads people to “understand the reasons behind things like going to Mass, confessing, praying, going to adoration, etc. That initial impact, when we first meet God and Jesus, should always live on in our actions—not just doing things out of habit.”

How the Church in Spain will tackle these issues is still an open question.

Keeping hope alive

The Church in Spain is undoubtedly facing challenges, similar to many Western nations. Despite so many bleak forecasts, Vargas, back in sunny Castelldefels, was optimistic for the future and inspired by the movements that have reinvigorated his parish.

He said: “There is something beautiful and hopeful in all this, a new beginning of faith and of the Church in people who have more thirst than prejudice, and when you facilitate their encounter with Christ, it excites and revolutionizes them. Hakuna and Effetá help many in that sense.”

He added: “How truly the Lord has risen! Sometimes it saddens me to see how we waste time with intra-church debates about identity or ideology, when what we should be doing is offering Jesus Christ to others and allowing Him to continue changing and filling hearts.”

What is clear is that the new movements in Spain are a major part of Catholic life in the country.

The Catholics impacted by them believe that they’ll continue bearing fruit — and that perhaps some of the empty baptismal fonts Archbishop Argüello lamented will gradually begin to fill up again.