Behind every name (well, unless it's the name of some purely fictional character), there's a birth and a there's a history. And that's true of the Reformed Baptist Church of Palma, Majorca, too.

The church was founded in 1960. Times were far from easy for Protestants (or Evangelicals) in Spain. There were still fifteen years left of a political regime which didn't look too kindly on any church or religion that was not the Roman Catholic Church. In fact the first years of the Palma Reformed Baptist Church were marked by unavoidable illegality, all sorts of restrictions and even open hostility on the part of the authorities and from not a few of the local people. The meetings each week had to be held in people's flats and houses, sometimes in more than one home at a time so as not to arouse suspicion on account of the number of people attending, and without the freedom to sing to the Lord. And even after the church had been able to buy their own flat, with the generous help of a foreign lady, the flat in question had to be sold again as a result of the (anti-Protestant) protests of the neighbours! Then, around 1964, the church was able to purchase the land on which our meeting-place continues to stand, and the building was put up during the years that followed, almost entirely by the church-members' own hands and in their own spare time.

The man God used to found the church was Joaquín Ranero Gascón, who was born in Cuba, an artist of widely recognised talent, and a great preacher of the Word of God. Since his death in 1989, there have been three other (official) pastors: Juan Bascuñana González (1990 – 1992); Trevor Thomas (1994 – 2000); and the church's present pastor, Andrew J. Birch (from 1st August, 2004). Between 1992 and 1994 the church benefited from the invaluable help of a 'retired' missionary, Fred Webb, along with his wife, Ruth.

"No one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1st Corinthians, chapter 3, verse 11).