Spain raises minimum age for marriage from 14 to 16

Spain has raised the legal minimum age for marriage from 14 to 16 as of Thursday, as the recently passed Law of Voluntary Jurisdiction comes into effect.

This law brings Spain more or less to be in line with the rest of Europe, although in many countries, such as France, Sweden, Finland and Ireland, the legal age for marriage is as high as 18 years old, while in the Ukraine it is still possible to marry at 14 and in Estonia at 15.

In reality the law will not have a great effect in the number of marriages, given that the number of child brides and grooms has been in sharp decline in Spain over the past 35 years.

According to Spain's National Institute of Statistics, the period 1980-1989 saw 12,867 minors get married with 96 percent of those girls and just 4 percent boys aged younger than 16, while in the following decade that number had fallen to 2,678, of whom 95 percent were girls.

The last 15 years have seen just 365 minors get married, although 98 percent of those were once again female.

The government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy proposed the change in the law in April 2013, although the United Nations had expressed its concern to Spain in 2007 over the fact that people could marry at age 14.

This was against the United National Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was signed by 20 countries, among them Spain in November 1989, becoming effective in September 1990. Endit