Spain

There is no publicly available government data on child marriage in Spain.

According to a 2015 report from the newspaper El País, 365 marriages involving people under the age of 16 had taken place in Spain since 2000.

Child marriage is driven by gender inequality and the belief that women and girls are somehow inferior to men and boys.

There is limited information on child marriage in Spain, but available studies suggest that is exacerbated by:

Ethnicity: A 2014 study by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights shows that around 2% of Roma girls aged 10-15 are traditionally married or cohabiting with a partner across 11 European Union member states, including Spain. 16% of Roma boys and girls aged 16-17 are legally or traditionally married or cohabiting across the 11 states.

Migration: While we lack concrete evidence, the NGO Ayuda en Acción indicates that harmful practices such as child marriage could be on the rise in Spain due to recent migration flows.

Spain has committed to ending child, early and forced marriage by 2030 in line with target 5.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The government is due to submit a Voluntary National Review at the 2024 High Level Political Forum.

The government submitted a 2021 Voluntary National Review at the High Level Political Forum. The review indicated that between 2015-2019 the number of women aged 20-24 who were married before the age of 15 and 18 was less than 0.01%.

Spain co-sponsored the following Human Rights Council resolutions: the 2013 procedural resolution on child, early and forced marriage, the 2015 resolution on child, early and forced marriage, the 2017 resolution on recognising the need to address child, early and forced marriage in humanitarian contexts, the 2019 resolution on the consequences of child marriage, the 2021 resolution on child, early and forced marriage in times of crisis, including the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2023 resolution on ending and preventing forced marriage. In 2014, Spain also signed a joint statement at the Human Rights Council calling for a resolution on child marriage.

Spain co-sponsored the 2013, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2022 UN General Assembly resolutions on child, early and forced marriage.

Spain ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990, which the Committee on the Rights of the Child has interpreted to recommend the establishment of a minimum age of marriage of 18, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1984, which obligates states to ensure free and full consent to marriage.

During its 2023 review, the CEDAW Committee expressed concern at the prevalence of gender-based violence, femicide, forced marriage and female genital mutilation/cutting (FMG/C) and that legislation to provide victims with protection is insufficient. The Committee recommended that the government take the necessary measures to address and redress harmful practices such as FGM/C and forced marriage.

In 2018, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended Spain to remove all exceptions to the minimum age of marriage of 18 years.

During its 2015 Universal Periodic Review, Spain agreed to examine recommendations to eliminate child marriage and increase the minimum age of marriage.

Spain has ratified the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (known as the Istanbul Convention), which considers forced marriage a serious form of violence against women and girls, and legally binds state parties to criminalise the intentional conduct of forcing an adult or child into a marriage.

At the London Girl Summit in July 2014, the government signed a charter committing to end child marriage by 2020.

The Spanish government is strongly committed to promoting gender equality and eliminating all forms of violence against women and girls. In 2017, the government adopted the first National Covenant on Combatting Gender-Based Violence 2018-2022. This Covenant aims to combat violence against women, empower women and aid to female victims.

Further to the Covenant, Instruction No. 4/2019, established a protocol for police to assess gender-based violence through a system known as VioGén.

The eighth pillar of the Pacto de Estado contra la Violencia de Género (State Pact against Gender-based Violence), adopted in 2017, provides for measures to raise awareness of and respond to other forms of violence against women and girls, including forced marriage.

The minimum age of marriage is 18. However, girls and boys aged 16 can be married off with judicial consent.

The minimum age for marriage with judicial consent was raised from 14 to 16 years old in 2015 when Spain passed the Voluntary Jurisdiction Law (Ley de JurisdicciónVoluntaria).