The right to vote, to education, to divorce... are the well-known successes of the feminist movement. However, there are countless much simpler things that until forty years ago a woman could not do in Spain. For example, opening a bank account, buying a house or preventing a jilted husband from giving up his children for adoption! In effect, an abusive law ruled that children belonged to the father, period.
Despite some notable changes in the last years of Franco's rule, it was the Spanish Constitution of 1978 that put the finishing touches on this endless number of exceptions and nuances in the Civil and Penal Code. Article 14: “Spanish people are equal before the law, without any discrimination based on birth, race, sex…”. Therefore, it was necessary to do without that “the man, and in his absence the woman” and other sexist literature.
We recover here some of the laws that, fortunately, ceased to exist, the worst and the most incomprehensible.
On October 6, 1976, the Zaragoza Court held a hearing against a woman for having traveled to the Canary Islands in the company of a man who was not her husband. In accordance with articles 449 and 452 of the Penal Code, the young Inmaculada Benito could face between six months and six years in prison. This is what was provided for adulterers and cohabitants (current de facto couples), although the law was much more guaranteeing for them than for them.
However, Spanish society was no longer like that. With feminist protesters banging on the courtroom doors, Benito was acquitted three days later for lack of evidence. Two years later, the crime was removed from the Penal Code.
For young Spanish women, getting married was always a bad deal. Everything was theirs (with particularities in the Catalan and Balearic cases from the sixties onwards), starting with the marital home, which the Civil Code referred to as “the husband's house”. They were free to do what they wanted with the home without having to inform their wife. What's more, in case of separation they could even throw her out on the street.
That began to change during the Franco era. Mainly thanks to Mercedes Formica (1913-2002), a feminist later reviled for her Falangist past. Her complaints led to the reform of 66 articles of the Civil Code, achieving, among other things, that the acquiescence of both spouses was needed to carry out any operation that affected the common home. For the marital assets to be considered the property of both, however, it was necessary to wait until 1981.
For many years, married women could not carry out the simplest financial and administrative tasks without the permission of their husbands. For example, opening a bank account, for which they needed the so-called “marital license.”
This was not an invention of the Franco regime; It already appeared in articles 60 and 61 of the Civil Code of 1889. In addition to the opening of current accounts, it also prohibited the sale of property, the purchase of property or appearing in court. For the latter, the only exceptions were cases in which the lawsuits were against the husbands themselves or when it was a matter of defending themselves against a criminal accusation.
This was the case until May 1975, when an already dying Franco regime eliminated the happy license. Finally, a Spanish woman could go to a bank and do whatever she wanted with the money she earned, or almost so.
Even after the disappearance of the marital license, married women continued to have problems purchasing a home. Since marital property was still considered the property of the husband (that did not change until 1981), many notaries refused to approve a purchase unless they could prove that the money was theirs.
