Spain saw 100,000 marriages end in first nine months of 2008

Madrid, Spain, Feb 19, 2009 / 15:22 pm

The Institute for Family Policy in Spain warned that the 100,000 marriages that ended during the first nine months of 2008 revealed that the breakdown of the family continues to be the main problem in Spanish homes and that leaders have not made up their minds to do anything to resolve it.

According to data from the courts, during the third trimester of 2008 there were more than 24,000 divorces, nearly 1,800 separations and 47 declarations of nullity, which represent a small decrease of one percent with respect to 2007.

However, during the first nine months of last year, there were a total of 96,500 ruptures between divorces (more than 89,000), separations and nullities, means that one marriage fails every four minutes.

According to the data, during the first nine months Andalusia was the community with the greatest number of ruptured marriages (18,052), followed by Catalonia (17,489) and Madrid (13,197). 

The president of the Institute for Family Policy, Eduardo Hertfelder, criticized the indifference of the government towards a problem such as family stability.

Hertfelder recalled that guaranteeing the right to conjugal stability is a fundamental task of the government, above all in the case of marriages where conflict or a crisis threatens children.