Spain: Social laws & Spanish best practices

Rights & Women

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• An end to gender based violence: With a law that grants ?effective? equality to women and men twenty Spanish courts have become specialized in dealing with cases of gender based violence. The specialized courts make sure that violent husbands are kept away from the homes of their victims and women who have suffered domestic violence are given special support to ensure they can be employed.
• New rules for parents: New mothers receive a baby bonus for every natural or adoptive child worth 2500 euros or 3500 euros if the family is large, if the mother is a single parent or if the child has a disability. Fathers, on the other hand, now have up to 12 days paternity leave, a right that more than 130 thousand men have used.
• Equality: Public administration posts must be filled by equal numbers of men and women.

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• First Spanish-African Conference of women entrepreneurs
• The Ellas Crean festival in Madrid, will be celebrated up to the 8th March, as part of the celebrations programmed for the International Day of women. The festival is organized by the Spanish Ministry for Labour and Social Affairs together with the Woman?s Institute (Istitito de la Mujer) and is dedicated to female creativity and philosophy.
• The Woman?s World Banking foundation has published a report on the ?Impact of microcredit on the life of female Spanish entrepreneurs? based on 200 interviews with women from across Spain.

Disability

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• Self suffuciency: A law passed in November 2006 enabled 1,125 million Spanish people who for reasons related to their age, illness? or disabilities are not able to be self sufficient, to longer be dependent. How? By assigning their caregivers, who are often family members, financial support. The amount is defined according to the degree of self sufficiency.

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• In 2007 the Caja de Madrid offered their annual Premios por la Obra Social (prizes for social work) for the best investigative report on problems and solutions surrounding the issue of dependency, as it was very much in the spotlight that year.

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• Sign Language becomes official: In October 2007 the Spanish government approved a law that legally recognized sign language as a language. This is a landmark in European legislation and is a huge step forwards for all deaf people.

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• The first ever children?s fairy tales collection for the deaf has been published by the local Andalucian government together with the Andalucian Federation for deaf people. Visit the website: www.faas.es
• A total of 162 thousand state employees from the community of Madrid (Comunidad de Madrid) will be taught the basics of sign language so that the 160 thousand residents with hearing difficulties will be facilitated in their dealings with the local government. www.madrid.org

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• Making the web more accessible: As of the 31st December 2008 large companies will all have to adapt their web pages so that their content is accessible to people with disabilities. Up to now it was only public administration websites that had to ensure accessibility to all, now the law will guarantee that all companies provide public services and that employ more than 100 people or whose annual turnover is greater than 6 million euros will have accessible websites.

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• www.cermi.es

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• Votes for all: The 9th March will be the first time that the ?accessible voting system? will be used in Spain. On Febrary 11th applications for the accessible voting packs closed after more than 1, 623 people had applied. The packs will allow more than a thousand blind people to exercise their right to a free and secret vote for the first time. The accessible packs are an initiative launched by the Catalan Association for the integration of the blind (ACIC) and consists of complementary information written in Braille and adapted voting envelopes. The packs can be collected on the election day, 9th March, at the local voting offices. This is a big victory for the association who have been campaigning since 2000 to change the electoral law.

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• www.votoaccesible.com/default.asp

Youth Policy

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• Grants for rent: A public grant worth 210 euros a month is available to Spanish youth (22 to 30 year olds) to help them pay rent if they earn less than 22 thousand euros a month. The grant costs the government 435 million euros and helps over 360 thousand young people.

• Social education in schools obliged by law: Learning how to be civil becomes part of the obligatory curriculum. Currently it is only taught in the 7 Spanish provinces that are governed by local socialist governments.