According to the latest report ‘Constitution and family. A failed principle‘, produced by the Centre for Studies, Training and Social Analysis (CEU-CEFAS), the State does not protect families on several key issues, in breach of what the 1978 Constitution (’CE-78") establishes in this respect, and the family structure in Spain is now much weaker than it was traditionally in our country prior to the 1977-1978 Constitutional stage. It is weaker in terms of its formation (very low marriage rate) and its stability (very high divorce rate). And, above all, and closely linked to the above, it is so in relation to something lethal for society if not corrected: the low fertility rate. All of this, moreover, leads to a great affective impoverishment and high rates of loneliness in childhood (due to the lack of siblings, and often with the absence of one parent at home, generally the father), in adulthood and old age (because more and more people do not live with a stable partner and/or do not have children).
As the study shows, since divorce became legal in Spain over 45 years ago, the data is not exactly a success story regarding protection of the family - a constitutional mandate - but quite the opposite. The rate of ‘marital fragility’ (number of divorces per hundred marriages) has exceeded 60% in 13 of the last 18 years. With current patterns of marital breakdown, at least 50% of marriages would eventually come to an end. Of these, one third would occur within the first 20 years of marriage and one fifth within the first 10.
Since the early 1980s, some three million legal marriages have broken down. As a result, 3.5 to 4 million children and young people have been directly affected by their parents’ separation. Divorce impoverishes unemancipated children economically and causes emotional damage, with an increased risk of needing mental-emotional treatment. There is also possible damage in the field of education and training, affecting their future professional success and standard of living as adults. It is also worth considering that at least 1.5 million married adults divorced against their will.
Even more important for the future sustainability of society and the affective well-being of Spaniards, and closely linked to the falling marriage rate and high divorce rate, is that the average number of children per woman having fallen by more than 50% since 1976, when the transition from Francoism to democracy began. Since 1981, fertility in Spain, measured in terms of the average number of children born per woman, has been below 2.1, the so-called replacement level. Between 1979 and 2022, the average value was 1.40, which means that each new generation of Spaniards is a third less numerous than the previous one. Worse still, for several years it has been below 1.2 children per woman, with the result that each new generation of Spaniards will be around 45% less numerous than the previous one.
Spanish society is ageing rapidly due to a lack of children and young people. For more than ten years, the number of births in Spain has been lower than the number of deaths, and by an increasing margin, currently more than 100,000 per year in total, and around 200,000 for native Spaniards. By spring 2024, a cumulative loss of 1.5 million native Spaniards has been reached since 2012, with more deaths of people born in Spain than births of babies to mothers born in Spain, a decline as worrying as it is unknown to Spaniards.
Large economic vulnerabilities for families
Families and their wealth suffer an effective tax burden double that of pre-SC-78, including confiscatory taxes, largely because of clear squandering, inefficiencies and regional disparities in public spending. From 1978 to 2023 there has been an average unemployment rate of 17% - and far higher youth unemployment - much more than before EC-78. In relation to average disposable income, buying a house is much more expensive than it was 45-50 years ago. Today's public debt, the result of successive fiscal deficits, has each family with a mortgage of more than a full year's income; in 1976, there was hardly any public debt.
In the mid-1970s, Spaniards paid, on average, direct and indirect taxes of all kinds, including social security contributions, some 20% or a little more, in total, of what they earned. Now, on average, they end up paying between 40% and 45%, including taxes on their accumulated wealth after having paid taxes on the income obtained in order to increase it, either immediately each year or when they die and their legitimate heirs inherit their wealth. And some of the taxes paid go as far as being confiscatory - such as taxing apparent capital gains, even though inflation between the acquisition of an asset and its sale exceeds its nominal revaluation. Then there is the case of people who pay more than 50% of their income in taxes - despite this being prohibited by the Constitution itself. And there are clear - and unconstitutional - inter-regional inequalities in tax benefits: the tax quota for the Basque Country and Navarre is very low, which allows them to spend much more on public benefits and services per inhabitant.
In the mid-1970s, on average, Spaniards paid direct and indirect taxes of all kinds, including social security contributions, 20% or a little more, in total, of what they earned. Now, on average, they end up paying between 40% and 45%, including taxes on their accumulated wealth after paying taxes on income earned in order to increase it, either immediately each year or on death, when their legitimate heirs dispose of their wealth. And some of the taxes paid go as far as confiscation such as taxing apparent capital gains, even though inflation between the acquisition of an asset and its sale exceeds its nominal revaluation, or the case of people who pay more than 50% of their income in taxes, despite this being prohibited by the Constitution itself. And there are clear - and unconstitutional - inter-regional inequalities in tax-benefits: the tax burden on the Basque Country and Navarre is very low, which allows them much greater public spending.
Much has been done to violate the Constitution in the area of housing and property, to the serious detriment of the working classes and young people in the age of emancipation from their parents' home. In recent decades, huge fortunes have been made in Spain by property developers who bought cheap, undeveloped land in urban áreas which was subsequently reclassified by the local council as suitable for the construction of housing or other uses. The other side of the coin has been the increase in price that the selective requalification of land has entailed for the homebuyer. Correspondingly, Spain has tended to develop much less subsidised housing, one of the key factors in the massive access to home ownership by lower-middle and lower-class Spaniards in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1978, around 40% of Spaniards lived in subsidised housing constructed in the previous 35 years, a percentage that would then be well over 50% among the less well-off half of the population. Finally, in recent years things have worsened due to a massive influx of immigrants in need of housing, official negligence / tolerance of ‘squatting’, and the recent return to legal overprotection of defaulting tenants, as well as defaulters on housing loans.
The result of all of the above has been and continues to be greater difficulty in accessing housing, especially for young people and lower, lower-middle class families. And, as a result, it has become more difficult for young people to emancipate from the parental home, which has been delayed on average from 25 years in the mid-1970s to around 30 years today, with a negative effect on the fertility rate.
Improved life expectancy
In the area of health, which is of such value to individuals and their families, broadly speaking, and without going into the efficiency of public spending on this point, article 43 of the Constitution on health protection has so far been satisfactorily fulfilled. By 1975-1976, Spain had already caught up with rich Europe with regard to life expectancy, a big jump from 1900. And in the last 45 years, Spain has led the EU in life expectancy, which has increased worldwide in general, but more so here than in most developed countries. Will it continue to improve as it has done until now? Lately there have been many complaints of shortages in the health care system - not only in the public sector, but also in some parts of the private sector - to which the ageing of the population and the massive influx of immigrants are contributing significantly.