The northern Spanish town of Lleida has become the country’s first to implement a law banning the wearing of face-covering Islamic veils such as burqas in municipal buildings.

Mayor Angel Ros says he is proud “that Lleida is the first city in Spain to regulate against something that is discriminatory against women.”

Speaking on Spanish National Radio thursday, Ros said the ban was a matter of equality between men and women.

The gesture is largely symbolic, because only about 3 per cent of Lleida’s population of 135,000 is Muslim and only a handful of Muslim women in Lleida actually wear body-covering burqas or face-covering niqab garments.