Spain raised its marrying age from 14 to 16 Thursday after continued pressure from child protection groups and United Nations' experts imploring the country to boost its protection for minors while aligning it more closely with the European Union.
The law previously allowed Spanish teenagers to marry as young as 14 with permission from a judge. Spain had one of the world's lowest minimum marriage ages. Most other countries part of the EU had the minimum age limit of 16, according to CNS News.
Legal Age To Marry In Europe
• 18: France, Belgium, Sweden and others
• 16: Germany, United Kingdom, Italy and others
• 15: Estonia (with the court's consent)
This change comes a few months after the government raised the age of sexual consent from 13 to 16, thus making the age required for both consent and marriage equal at 16.
The government announced its intention to alter the law in April 2013, but it has only now come into effect.
While the change may seem like a major step, the ability to marry at such a young age has already proven itself to be outdated. Only 365 marriages with teens under 16 took place between 2000 and 2014, with only five of those marriages occurring in 2014. This is a sharp decline from the '80s and '90s when, respectively, 12,867 and 2,678 marriages involving at least one person under 16 took place, according to the BBC.
The BBC also noted that a study by Spain's Statistical Institute of Catalonia found that men in the region married at an average age of 33.6 years in 2013, which was up from 30.7 years 10 years earlier. Women, on the other hand, married at an average age of 32.6 years, which was up from 28.7 years 10 years ago.
Despite the evidence of the practice's decline, the United Nations' experts and child protection groups that lobbied for Spain to increase the marriage limit for the past several years were thrilled with the law's adjustment, according to the Daily Mail.
"Fundamentally, it's a measure of protection to avert possible forced marriages, sexual exploitation or offenses against children, especially girls," said Ana Sastre on behalf of a Spanish charity.
