For a considerable period, Islamists have argued they will defeat the West in the bedroom. Without swords, guns or conquest, Muslims will simply overwhelm Europe with a birthrate that outpaces the indigenous population. Bat Ye’or described this condition as the emergence of “Eurabia.”

Evicted five centuries ago by Christians, the Arabs are back in Spain buying land that was seized from their ancestors. Costa del Sol is a de facto province of Saudi Arabia. There are close to 1,500 mosques in Spain and a Muslim population approaching 20 percent of the nation’s total.

Proselytizing occurs routinely in the schools and conversions are at record rates. Some have called this the “quiet conquest,” but lately it is less quiet and quite overt. In Marbella, the Alanda hotel offers halal food and religious services to meet the demands of the ever growing Muslim clients.

This epic demographic change is occurring against a backdrop of a faltering Spanish economy. Unemployment among those under 35 is near 50 percent. It is therefore notable that Saudi Aramco recently awarded Spanish companies projects worth $700 million and Spain and Qatar are planning the formation of a $1 billion joint investment fund.

In 1990 Muslims in Spain numbered 100,000; by 2010 the number has increased to 1.5 million and by 2017 two million, a growth of 1900 percent in 27 years. In 1985 the Saudi kingdom opened the Islamic Cultural Center in Madrid, Europe’s largest mosque. The Saudis also launched a new Spanish television channel, Cordoba TV, as did Iran. Catholic churches have not varied in number for years, but Muslim mosques have been growing at a rate of 20 percent annually.

Spain has become the gateway to an Islamicized Europe. While the EU sleeps, Islam marches. It is not coincidental that Spain is coping with the Catalonian separatist movement. The Regionalist Party of Catalonia contends it has an economy far more successful than the rest of Spain and not as heavily reliant on Muslim financing. Whether the actual breakaway will be enacted remains to be seen. On one matter there cannot be any question: The Spain of the pre-Franco past has given way to a new nation.

It is instructive that after Israel was recognized by the United Nations in 1948, Spain routinely supported this fledging state. But with growing Muslim influence the Spanish government has adopted the anti-Zionist narrative of the Arab states. For Muslims the land once ruled by Islam is permanently part of its patrimony. This doctrine of “entitlement” to land once occupied applies to swaths of the Balkans, central Europe and, of course, Israel.

There is little doubt this conflict between Islam and the West which has been ongoing for hundreds of years, is likely to continue into the foreseeable future.

Looking at the conflict through Spanish eyes, it is clear Islam is on the ascendency and Western civilization is in retreat. Is it possible to envision a Christian coalition challenging Islam the way it did in 1529 at the gates of Vienna and again in 1683? This is the trial of a thousand years. In the balance is the fate of Western civilization. Re-Islamizing Spain has occurred without much fanfare, but is there a tipping point that would stir a response or have we gone so far beyond recovery that nothing can be done?