Spain’s changing family values

The Spain we see today is very different from the one we learned of in our history classes, which was bound by the strict rule of Catholicism.  Even before the infamous oppression of the Inquisition, the Catholic Church had been shaping Spanish society’s values for hundreds of years, and its power would continue unabated for centuries more.  By the twentieth century, under Franco’s repressive regime, religion and government conspired to control every facet of a citizen’s life, defining social structure and family life to an extraordinary degree.  Under this authoritarian rule, change came late and slowly.  It was only in 1975 Article 57 of the Spanish Civil Code was abolished, known as the Permiso Marital law, which had subjugated a wife’s rights to own property, work or even travel away from home to the consent of her husband, and demanded her obedience.  The death of Franco and the subsequent 1978 Constitution three years later finally set the framework for loosening the stranglehold the church had over the State and its people.  New laws and rapid social change prised away the grip of Catholicism, finger by finger, over the following decades as the country underwent an economic boom.  In recent years, the return to power of the socialist party has accelerated some aspects of social change beyond even the norms of most developed countries.

The seeds of change were sown even before the death of Franco.  Swelling cities introduced urban life to many hundreds of thousands of people as they abandoned their fields and farms during the 1960s and early 1970s.  At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Spanish who had been working abroad returned home.  In the five years before 1970, 550,000 came home and another 750,000 were to return over the following decade.  These returning expats brought the experience and cultural habits of countries like France, Switzerland and West Germany which were to play a major influence in shaping the transformation of post-Franco Spain.  Different perspectives and attitudes were not only imported when these workers came back: there was another type of population influx that was to influence the changes to come.  Mass tourism brought more exposure to the liberal British and Scandinavians as well as other Europeans.  Attitudes to sex, women’s rights and even the very nature of the family, the sacrosanct pillar of Castro’s Catholic Spain, were set to undergo drastic change.

When Franco died in 1975, the floodgates of social change opened, and one of the most obvious and immediate transformations was in the nation’s attitudes to sex.  Spain went from being a country where Playboy magazine was banned until 1976, to one in which uncensored blue films showed regularly in mainstream cinemas, magazine racks overflowed with home-grown adult titles, and even the most respected press carried adverts for brothels: all within a decade.  Attitudes to sex in today’s Spain are some of the most liberal in the world. 

Changes have been even more dramatic with women’s status in society, and this has led to changes in family life as well.  In Castro’s Spain, women had to adhere to a strict moral code of sexual conduct, though this was not expected of men.  Women were supposed to live up to an idealistic role of a perfect wife and mother.  A bitter irony was that another permissible and legal role for a woman was as a prostitute. 

Even before the demise of Franco, women had tentatively started to change their role in the workplace.  Though opportunities were limited and many professional careers restricted their progress, by the late 1970s almost one in five women had a job.  By the mid eighties this had become a third.  In education, however, women were rapidly catching up with men and by the mid 1980s their numbers were about equal.

Through the 1970s the average size of families reduced and in the increasingly urban population, the extended family of three or more generations living together all but disappeared.  Franco’s iconic family model has changed as families become more transient, moving to cities and away from religious conviction.  In 1975, 10,895 Spanish children were born out of wedlock but by 2006 it had reached 137,041. 

At the same time, family law was changing rapidly.  Having thrown off the yoke of dictatorship, the new democracy was eager to bring Spain into the modern world.  Laws against adultery were annulled in 1978 and in 1981 the government reformed sections of the civil code dealing with family finances. In the same year, the monopoly on marriage was finally torn away from the Church.  Under Franco’s regime, if one of the couple was Catholic, then the marriage had to be performed under Catholic law, and Catholicism prohibits divorce.  The only way in which a marriage could be terminated was by annulment, a long and arduous administrative process through the court of La Rota (a canonical court).  The new law made divorce finally a possibility in Spain. 

The pace of legislative change in the short history of Spain’s democracy has followed the change of government.  During the late 1990s until 2004, eight years of conservative rule was a breathing space before the socialist PSOE came to power and the reformers once more were in the driving seat.  Gay marriage and adoption rights became part of the law in 2005: Spain was only the third country in the world to pass such a law, after the Netherlands and Belgium.  Zapatero’s PSOE also implemented laws ensuring equal rights for women, including equal pay and extensive protection from domestic violence.  The macho side of Spanish culture took another battering with laws that ensure that at least half of political party candidates put forward for elections are women.  More laws allowed for ‘express divorces’ as conservative critics mourned the passing of traditional values.

In a very short period of time, Spain’s social policy has caught up with its European cousins, and in some areas it has passed many.  The new urban, mobile and smaller family unit is increasingly likely to contain just one adult, and it remains to be seen how many gay couples choose to adopt.  Women’s rights have come a very long way, and we are only just starting to see how the complexion of government and parliament will change with the large numbers of new female representatives.  All these new rights and liberties have not been won without opposition from conservatives and the Church.  Spanish bishops organised huge rallies in Madrid to protest against Zapatero's new laws, but opinion polls have showed that the reforms have had broad support.