Word: spain
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...even a prosperous future presents knotty challenges. In the course of just two generations, Spain's economic expansion has turned it from an emigrant to an immigrant nation. Integrating new arrivals is a Socialist priority, but many immigrants don't support the party's progressive family policies. Ana Maria Vinazza says that in the decade since she arrived from Peru, "the Spanish family has changed for the worse." Beyond her opposition to gay marriage, and concern with the loss of religious values, she sees too many Spaniards indulging the young. "Parents give children too much. You have to earn what...
...couldn't marry because they weren't serious. If your rights don't have the same name, they don't have the same protection or the same standing." Zerolo, whose wedding was one of the approximately 10,000 gay marriages licensed under the new law, is proud to see Spain catapult itself from behind the curve to ahead of it on these issues. "This the first time in Spanish history that we are world leaders in equality," he says. "With an effervescent economy and the recognition of the dignity of every man and woman, we are a country prepared...
Along with an influx of practicing Catholics from Latin America, Spain has seen the arrival of an estimated 1 million Muslims in the past two decades, mostly from North Africa. Moroccan-born Abdul Aziz, 42, is likewise skeptical of gay marriage, and the ease with which many native Spaniards jettison the traditional family unit. "There are so many people not married, with no children. For me, this is not life. Life should be a mother, father, children," says the unemployed construction worker and father of two. He says Islam is a regular part of his life, even as he becomes...
...Catholic Legacy Even before 1492, when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella vanquished Granada, the last stronghold of Muslim rule on the Iberian peninsula, the Roman Catholic Church set a rigorous religious tone for Spain. For centuries, the Catholic faith - and the patriarchal family structure that it inspired - was the foundation of daily life from the hills of the Basque country to the Andalusian coastline. But the Spanish church was often an overbearing, sometimes repressive presence that brought the Inquisition and provided cover to Franco's fascist regime. Its influence was exemplified by the introduction of the Spanish Civil Code...
...barely a whisper with the 1978 approval of a law with much wider implications: the end to the long-standing ban on the sale of contraception. Divorce and abortion would follow, as well as some of Europe's most open access to assisted-fertility treatments. In just decades, Spain has gone from a country whose women were forced to go abroad to obtain a safe and legal abortion to one that draws thousands of couples for its advanced assisted-fertility treatment...