| MADRID, Spain—A generation ago, traditional families were sacred in Spain.
Gen. 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 that 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 the changes,
the general public seems to be taking them in its stride.
Spain is one of the few countries that grant full legal status to same-sex
couples, including adoption rights. Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez
Zapatero, whose Socialist government enacted many of the changes, 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 in elections March 9, are women.
All this is in stunning contrast to the conservative society forged in
Franco’s dictatorship, and is seen by political scientist Ramon Cotarelo as
a reaction to having spent nearly four decades feeling like 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 percent in favor and 30 percent against.
Only a few thousand gay couples in this nation of 45 million have married,
but the Catholic church is fighting back.
At a church-convened rally Dec. 30 in Madrid to plug traditional family
values, bishop after bishop stood up to denounce Zapatero. A crowded
estimated at least at 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.
The archbishop of Valencia, Cardinal Agustin Garcia-Gasco, said gay
marriage and streamlined procedures for divorce were undermining Spain’s
families and social fabric.
“Along this path we are headed toward the dissolution of democracy,” he
warned the crowd.
Zapatero hit back by accusing the church of trying to impose its view on a
people he described as perfectly comfortable with gay marriage.
“Whatever some cardinal may say, the family, understood in a broad sense,
is in very good health,” Zapatero told a campaign rally.
Under Franco, the church was powerful and close to the government. Franco’s
death in 1975 cost the clergy a source of support, and these days only a
small proportion of the 80 percent of Spaniards who call themselves
Catholic attend church regularly.
Meanwhile, the democratic society that has gradually involved since Franco
died in 1975 shows striking tolerance of homosexuality. In a media campaign
last year to fight AIDS by encouraging gay men to use condoms, one of the
participants was Fernando Grande-Marlaska, a prominent judge at Spain’s
main terrorism court, who is openly gay.
One sign that society is at ease with gay rights is that the issue is not
much of an issue in next month’s election. Cotarelo said the changes have
probably not angered many moderate conservatives, a key consideration in a
race where centrist votes are crucial.
Instead, alongside worries about renewed Basque separatist violence, it’s
the economy, estupido _ inflation above 4 percent, skyrocketing interest
rates on mortgages, and a general sense that one of Europe’s top-tier
economies is cooling.
These are the issues that are giving Zapatero a tough run for a second
term. The Socialists and the conservative Popular Party which Zapatero
unseated in 2004 are running neck-and-neck in opinion polls.
The area in which Zapatero decisively outpolls his Popular Party
challenger, Mariano Rajoy, is social reform, and Zapatero capitalizes on
it.
When he called the vote in mid-January, he looked back on his four years in
power and his promise to deliver socially sensitive governance. “I kept my
word,” he said. |
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