First Church in Spain Joins Gafcon Breakaway Anglican Movement

A small congregation in Valencia has become the first church in Spain to formally join the Anglican Convocation Europe, the confessional Anglican evangelical movement breaking with Canterbury. The Comunidad Anglicana Evangélica de Valencia (Evangelical Anglican Community of Valencia), led by Pastor Julián Milson, announced the move this week. Its decision makes Spain the latest front in a split now running across the whole Anglican world.

The Valencia congregation leaves the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church (IERE), the historic Anglican body in Spain, which counts about 20 parishes. The IERE reaffirmed its full loyalty to Canterbury in October 2025, choosing to stay with the Archbishop of Canterbury. Valencia has chosen the opposite road.

The move did not come out of nowhere. For years, conservative Anglicans have argued that Canterbury has drifted from the faith the Communion once shared, and the argument has now hardened into two rival structures. Valencia's decision puts a Spanish flag on one side of that divide for the first time.

For the people in the pews, the question is simpler than the politics. They want to know whether their church still believes what it believed when they joined it. When the Church argues about its future, ordinary believers still gather on Sunday to pray, and that is where the real Communion lives.

What Gafcon Declared in October 2025

The wider break took formal shape on October 16, 2025, when the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (Gafcon) declared that it is now the Global Anglican Communion. In the same declaration it said it no longer recognises Sarah Mullally, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as the head of the Communion.

The numbers behind the declaration are large. In March 2026, 347 bishops from 27 provinces signed the Abuja Affirmation, the document that set out Gafcon's claim to be the true continuation of the Communion. In August 2026, Gafcon announced that its headquarters would be in Abuja, Nigeria.

Gafcon chairman Laurent Mbanda, the Primate of Rwanda, put it bluntly: "The reset of our beloved Communion is now uniquely in the hands of GAFCON, and we are ready to take the lead." He added: "We have not left; we are the Anglican Communion."

Anglican Split in Europe: Who Stays Loyal to Canterbury

Europe is split down the middle. The Church of Ireland and the IERE in Spain have both declared their loyalty to Canterbury, standing with the historic centre. The Anglican Network in Europe (ANiE), by contrast, aligns itself with Gafcon, and the Valencia congregation now joins that side through the Anglican Convocation Europe.

The Valencia church is small, but its decision carries weight because it is the first. Other congregations in Spain have watched the argument from the sidelines, and a first mover gives them a path to follow, or a warning to heed. Faith is not kept by institutions; it is kept by people who refuse to let go of what they believe.

The European argument echoes other church clashes this year, from Kenya Catholic Bishops Ban Political Speeches in Churches Ahead of 2027 Election to French Bishops Tell Catholic Hospitals to Refuse Assisted Dying, and from European Evangelicals Stand With Ukraine After Attacks Leave Thousands Without Heating to German Evangelicals Ask Jews Forgiveness for Nazi Failures. Each case asks the same question: where does the Church draw its line?

What happens next in Spain is unwritten. The IERE keeps its parishes and its loyalty to Canterbury, while Valencia's congregation now looks to Abuja rather than Lambeth.

The seperate paths may run side by side for years, or the Valencia decision may be the first of many. Nobody in Valencia is pretending the road ahead is easy.

One congregation has chosen, and the choice is now public. The question hanging over Spain's Anglican churches tonight is whether Valencia stands alone, or whether its step is the first of a longer walk that other parishes are already quietly considering.