An Italian city council has promised its full support to a woman who says she was excluded from a gym because she was wearing a veil.

The episode was revealed by the city council of Mirandola, near Modena, to whom the 28-year-old Italian woman had reported the incident.

“The owner,” she wrote in a letter to the mayor, “refused my membership because I dress in a not-very-western way. I asked for clarification and he replied that in his gym he doesn’t let in nuns or Batman, alluding to the veil that covers my head.”

The gym owner concluded the discussion by saying: “My gym, my rules,” she wrote.

The woman, who was born in Morocco but has lived in Italy since 1999 and has been an Italian citizen since 2016, said in her letter: “I know the law, the constitution and its principles, and there is no excuse for what happened to me.”

The municipality of Mirandola expressed its solidarity with the woman and condemned the episode. The city council has already met her, and promised its support for any legal action taken against the owner of the gym.

A few days earlier, Nasri Assiya, 20, a candidate for the populist Five Star Movement party (M5S) for the Montoro municipal council, was attacked on social media because she decided to campaign for upcoming elections wearing a veil. Numerous Islamophobic comments were published in response to the post that announced her candidacy.

In her defence, the M5S national deputy Stefania Ascari said: “Assiya has freely chosen to wear the hijab because it has a very important meaning for her and for her way of living the faith.”