The draft family law (the first state law) began its parliamentary procedure yesterday after being approved by the Council of Ministers and after receiving the clarifications and recommendations (non-binding) from the General Council of the Judiciary and the Council of State. Large families have shown their rejection of part of the text, given that they do not want to lose their identity to be included in a broader category called “family with more needs for parenting support”.
The rule, which equates the rights of all classes of family, aims to safeguard the right of workers to be able to take care of their closest relatives and the people they live with when they get sick, whether they are hospitalized or not (so far, only for hospital admission and only relatives).
It also extends social protection to families with a universal income of 100 euros for those with children up to three years old, including working mothers, even part-time or temporary, and those who are unemployed that have a benefit even if it is not contributory. A change with respect to the initial text is that there is no longer reference to the parental pin following the guidelines of the Council of State (in the first round, the rule established the veto to which parents prevented access to content on family diversity through of the parental pin in educational centers “to protect the rights of children and adolescents”, indicated the previous text).
With regard to the right to conciliation, three permits are included, “which put care and time at the center and which gives support to families”, they point out from the Ministry of Social Rights.
On the one hand, a leave of care is established for five days a year, which can be used in the event of an accident or serious illness, hospitalization or surgical intervention without hospitalization that requires rest, both of a relative of up to the second degree (grandparents, children, grandchildren and siblings) as a cohabitant, something new until now.
Another leave – “due to force majeure” – will be distributed by the hour and may total up to four days a year. The latter aims to allow parents to be absent from work when there are urgent and unforeseeable family reasons, such as a sudden illness of the minor.
And an eight-week parental leave, which they can have continuously or intermittently, full-time or part-time, until the minor turns eight.
The family law, promoted by the ministry headed by Ione Belarra, responds to Spain’s international commitments regarding the reconciliation of family and professional life for parents and carers.
The text guarantees “the full recognition of the different types of families that already exist by equalizing their rights”, they point out from the Belarra department. Thus, LGTBI families, those with a disabled member, multiple, adoptive, reconstituted or foster families, among others, will be recognised.
The draft of the CGPJ report on the rule, advanced by El País, endorses that it favors a “broad conception” of the concept of family, but believes that the “scope of application” (…) “exceeds the constitutional framework and creates confusion, legal uncertainty and inequality among the recipients of the protection measures”.
The text approved yesterday equates the rights between marriages and common-law partners, and guarantees that common-law partners have 15 days of leave per registration.
From the approval of the law, more families will have social protection under the name of “families with more needs for parenting support”. This category will include those considered until now as large families (something that this collective did not like at all, which asks to maintain a different nomenclature), in addition to single parents with two children, those who have two children in which an ascendant or descendant has a disability and families with two children headed by a victim of gender violence, among others.
In addition, large families with four children (previously five) and families with three children and low incomes will be considered as families with more needs for support for special category parenting.
