Spanish society after the democratic transition
In essence, Spanish social values and attitudes were modernized at the same pace, and to the same degree, as the country's class structure, economic institutions, and political framework.
To some extent, these changes were due to the rural exodus that had uprooted hundreds of thousands of Spaniards and had brought them into new urban social settings.
Schools offered no sex education courses, and family planning centers existed only where local authorities were willing to pay for them.
The consequence of a loosening of sexual restraints, combined with a high level of ignorance about the technology that could be substituted in their place, was a rise in the number of unwanted pregnancies, which led to the second policy problem: abortion.
Subsequently, the number rose to about 350,000 annually, which gave Spain one of the highest ratios of abortions to live births among advanced industrial countries.
Abortion continued to be illegal in Spain until 1985, three years after the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español or PSOE) came to power on an electoral platform that promised a change.
Spanish society, for centuries, had embraced a code of moral values that established stringent standards of sexual conduct for women (but not for men); restricted the opportunities for professional careers for women, but honored their role as wives and (most important) mothers; and prohibited divorce, contraception, and abortion, but permitted prostitution.
The principal barrier to women in the work place, however, was not public opinion, but rather such factors as a high unemployment rate and a lack of part-time jobs.
In 1983, approximately 46 percent of Spain's university enrollment was female, the thirty-first highest percentage in the world, and comparable to most other European countries.
Without her husband's approval, referred to as the permiso marital, a wife was prohibited from almost all economic activities, including employment, ownership of property, or even travel away from home.
It was not until deciding a 1987 case, for example, that Spain's Supreme Court held that a rape victim need not prove that she had fought to defend herself in order to verify the truth of her allegation.
Ecosocialist-Eurocommunist United Left has traditionally been the distant fourth political force in Spain, and recently has further lost some of its presence and representation.
While Roman Catholicism remains the largest nominal religion in Spain, most Spaniards - especially the younger ones — choose to ignore the Catholic teachings in morals, politics or sexuality, and don't attend Mass regularly.
[10][11][12][13] Culture wars are far more related to politics than to religion, and the huge lack of popularity of typically religion-related issues like creationism prevent them from being used in such conflicts.
[14] Spanish society is considered one of the most culturally liberal and LGBT-friendly countries in the world, with 84% of Spaniards in 2015 believing that same-sex marriage should be allowed throughout Europe.
