Child Marriage - Spain

Marriage at age fourteen is legal in Spain and has recently got world attention. Health Minister Leire Pajin said: “There is a technical discussion of a law that we want to present to protect minors... and in that discussion, children's organizations point out that the United Nations." He recommends raising the minimum age from fourteen to sixteen in Spain. Spain said on February 3rd, 2011, that the government has no immediate plans to raise the minimum legal age for marriage from fourteen, one of the lowest in Europe, to bring it in line with UN recommendations. In Spain from 2000 to 2008 the Europa Press new agents, quoting official statistics reported that a total of 326 children aged fifteen or younger have been married. Yolanda Roman, of the charity Save the Children, said, “fourteen is the age at which teenagers are in a sensitive age, in which the emotional and psychological development is not complete,” Spain has to raise their minimum marriage age.
Spain does not even have a problem about underage child marriage because Spain has already given enough power to let children have human rights. According to the Spanish law, both a man and a woman need to be at least eighteen years old to get married. If they are between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, they need the consent of a parent or guardian. Last October, a ten year-old Catholic girl gave birth in Spain; her husband was thirteen years old. Her mom said she's delighted to have a new granddaughter and doesn't understand why the birth has shocked anyone. Her mom also said she didn't understand the attention the case was generating because she and her daughter are of Roma descent and their custom is to allow girls to marry young even though that's against the law in native Romania. Meanwhile, the story was going viral on the Internet and causing an uproar in Spain. This event made the people all over the world start discussing child marriage and the efforts to increase the minimum marriage age.