Two young women walk down the street toward the M-30 mosque in Madrid on Friday, just before prayers. One of them is wearing a brown headscarf, the other a black one.

The woman with the brown hijab is holding a newspaper article about the Popular Party's proposal to regulate the use of headscarves in public schools. She is a 24-year-old engineer who has been living in Spain for six years and would rather not give out her real name. Her accent is Spanish, and there is nothing different about her except for the hijab, which she always wears, even if it counts against her. And she says it does.

"When I go to interviews they say they'll call me. But I know it's not true. I know that they won't, and it's because of the headscarf."

"It's foolish and disrespectful. Why does it bother them that I wear a headscarf?" asks her friend. "I wear it because I am a believer, because the Koran says that women must cover their heads and men must wear loose clothing. But I don't wear it at work, because I work with the public and it would cause me trouble. I'm not as brave as my friend here."

"But we're not inferior to men, submissive, or stupid. We're just believers," she adds.

That same Friday, Juan Costa, Popular Party (PP) campaign coordinator, had said that if his party wins the 9 March elections, public schools will be able to decide whether to allow the hijab in the classroom. Currently the hijab is neither expressly allowed nor prohibited. And this legal void creates bizarre situations that are resolved in different ways by different people.

For instance, José Antonio Martínez, the principal of a high school in Orcasitas, Madrid, with a large immigrant student population, prohibited the use of any religious symbol whatsoever in class - and he didn't have the Islamic veil in mind when he made that decision. "No, I did it because of the enormous crosses worn by the Latin Kings around their necks. We thought it was the most sensible thing to do, and several high schools in Madrid are doing the same."

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