Spain's new Socialist government is clashing with the Roman Catholic Church over the administration's plans to allow gay marriages, speed up divorce and make abortion easier to obtain in this traditionally Catholic country.
Like several other European countries, including Germany and France, some regions in Spain already allow "registered cohabitation," which gives same-sex couples some of the same benefits under the law as marriage, according to the Gay and Lesbian Intergroup of the European Parliament. Belgium and the Netherlands allow gay couples to wed, and Finland and Sweden allow "registered partnerships," which confer nearly the same rights as matrimony, the group said.
With regard to abortion, a 1985 law allows women in Spain to seek an abortion in cases of rape or fetal deformity or if the pregnancy endangers the woman's health.
A ban on divorce was lifted after the death of Franco in 1975. But Justice Minister Juan Fernando López Aguilar said Tuesday that he planned to push Spanish law much further. He told a parliamentary committee that the ministry would seek to make gay marriages legal, giving same-sex pairs "the same rights and faculties," like pensions and inheritance, granted to heterosexual couples. The government appears to have the support in Parliament to pass the measures.
Under the proposals, Mr. López Aguilar said, women would no longer need a doctor's certification that they had met one of the conditions for terminating a pregnancy in order to obtain a first-trimester abortion. Couples would no longer be required to seek a legal separation of up to one year before filing for divorce, "a protracted agony," he said in a telephone interview.
Gaspar Llamazares, leader of the United Left Party, an ally of the Socialists, said the government's plan did not go far enough. It should take a firmer stance, he said, on the right of gay couples to adopt children, an issue that is more divisive here than gay marriage. The government should also offer a solution for doctors and women awaiting trial on charges of performing, or undergoing, an illegal abortion, he said.
But Spain's powerful Catholic church has already sounded the alarm. The Institute of Family Policy, a private group aligned with church positions, issued a statement calling the new measures "family phobic." The archbishop of Santiago de Compostela, Julián Barrio, said that marriage should be "formed by a man and a woman."
The secretary general of the Spanish Roman Catholic Bishops' Conference, Juan Antonio Martínez Camino, denounced the abortion proposal, telling reporters at a news conference, "Laws that permit the elimination of human lives don't deserve to be called laws." He said the Catholic hierarchy would endorse demonstrations against gay marriage, liberalization of abortion and other steps taken since the March 14 elections.
"We are respectful of the church, we are in permanent dialogue, and we are ready to explain our position and exert our responsibilities," Mr. López Aguilar said, adding that he had met with Cardinal Antonio María Rouco Varela. "We are not doing anything that is prejudicial to families.''
A sociologist at the Autonomous University of Madrid, Gerardo Meil, said, "The church is influential in education, but not people's everyday lives. Spain has always seen itself as too traditional. The dictatorship, and a cultural inferiority complex compared to the rest of Europe, has led to positions that are extremely liberal."