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Spain takes same-sex marriage and speedy divorce in its stride
A generation ago, traditional families were sacred in Spain. General Francisco Franco liked them big and Catholic, and gave hefty cash prizes to parents with the most copious broods.
- AP
- Published: 00:22 January 29, 2008
- Image Credit: AP
- The archbishop of Madrid, Jose Antonio Maria Rouco Varela (left), marches during a demonstration in Madrid on Saturday to protest the Socialist government's Bill to legalise gay marriage.
Madrid, Spain: A generation ago, traditional families were sacred in Spain. General Francisco Franco liked them big and Catholic, and gave hefty cash prizes to parents with the most copious broods.
These days a civics course in Spain's public schools teaches modern families can be quite different - single parents with kids, or same-sex couples raising adopted children.
This and a host of other social reforms have given traditionally Catholic Spain a striking new look, and while the clergy is fighting it, the general public seems to be taking the change in its stride. As Spain heads into a general election on March 9, gay rights are low on the priorities list.
Instead, alongside worries about renewed Basque separatist violence, the economy is the issue - inflation above 4 per cent, skyrocketing interest rates on mortgages, and a general sense that one of Europe's top-tier economies is cooling.
This may explain why the conservative Popular Party, unseated in 2004, is running neck-and-neck with the ruling Socialists in opinion polls.
Capitalises
The area in which Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero decisively outpolls his Popular Party challenger, Mariano Rajoy, is social reform, and Zapatero capitalises on it.
When he called the vote in mid-January, he looked back on his four years in power and said he had delivered on a pledge of socially sensitive governance. "I kept my word," Zapatero said.
Spain is one of the few countries that grant full legal status to same-sex couples, including adoption rights.
Zapatero also engineered a law granting financial aid to families caring for handicapped or elderly relatives, amnestied 600,000 undocumented aliens, and created special courts to prosecute spousal violence.
Half the members of Zapatero's Cabinet, and half the Socialist candidates running for legislative seats, are women.
All this is in stunning contrast to the Spain forged under Franco's dictatorship, and is seen by political scientist Ramon Cotarelo as a reaction to having spent nearly four decades as the continent's repressed, backward cousin.
"Spaniards like to come across as progressive. They think that this way they remedy the inferiority complex they have with respect to the rest of Europe," said Cotarelo, who teaches at Complutense University in Madrid.
An Instituto Opina poll published the day after the gay marriage law passed in 2005 showed 62 per cent in favour and 30 per cent against.
Only a few thousand gay couples in this nation of 45 million have married, and Cotarelo said the change has probably not angered many moderate conservatives, a key consideration in a race where centrist votes are crucial.
The Roman Catholic church, however, is furious.
At a church-convened rally on December 30 in Madrid to plug traditional family values, bishop after bishop stood up to denounce Zapatero.
A crowd estimated to number at least 150,000 roared in approval when Pope Benedict XVI appeared live on giant TV screens from Rome and said marriage is the unbreakable union of man and woman.
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