‘Children’ will no longer be able to get married in Spain

YOUTHS below 16 years old are no longer able to get married in Spain.
The Voluntary Jurisdiction law, which comes into force today (Wednesday, July 15), raises the minimum age for marriage and stops those below the age of 14 from doing so as they had previously been able to.
A judge in Spain is now prevented from considering a 14-year-old youngster as independent, as was previously permitted under article number 48 of the Spanish Civil Code.
In any case, such marriages have become less and less common. During the last year, only five marriages of couples below 16 years took place. Since 1975, a total of 28,690 ‘children’ have got married, according to the National Statistics Institute (INE). The negative trend can be observed in the data of the past 14 years, when only 365 people below 16 years old have got married.
“This measure will be an added hindrance to extremely severe practices such as forced marriages or pederasty,” said Head of the Childhood Platform, Carlos Martinez-Almeida.
Until now, the legal age at which one could get married in Spain was the lowest in the whole of the European Union.