Single parents in Spain can request the same total amount of paid parental leave that couples are entitled to, a regional court has ruled, in a case that could be a game changer for the large number of one-parent families in the country.
The decision, by a court in the southeastern region of Murcia this month, is the first to stem from a November ruling by Spain’s constitutional court that barred discrimination against children born into single-parent families.
“The duration and intensity of the need for care and attention of a newborn is the same regardless of the family model into which they were born,” the constitutional court wrote in its decision, which the regional court cited.
In practice, it means that solo parents can request the full amount of paid leave that Spanish couples are entitled to — six weeks of mandatory leave that must be taken together, plus an additional 10 for each parent, a total of 16 weeks per parent. For a single person serving as both parents, that adds up to 32 weeks of paid leave, according to the regional court’s ruling.
Carla Vall, a Barcelona-based lawyer who is an expert on gender, said that new parents in other parts of Spain could cite the Murcia court’s decision in applying for the benefit. “Now this doctrine means that the rest of the courts are going to adopt this reading of rights,” she said in a telephone interview.
Pablo Bustinduy, the social rights minister, described the decision as “excellent news and a victory for civil society after years of struggle and demands.”
The ruling brings Spain in line with a growing effort to standardize the amount of leave between single parents and couples, joining European countries including Finland, Germany and Sweden, in addition to Australia.
Spain, which has one of the lowest fertility rates in the European Union, has for decades tried to encourage more births, including offering incentives such as tax deductions and a child bonus — with little success. Spain also recently increased the leave available to fathers.
“What Spain has done is actually make paternity and maternity leave comparable to each other, which is fairly unusual,” said Peter Moss, an emeritus professor at University College London who studied parental leave, adding, “They equalized the two.”
Single parents make up one in 10 families in Spain, according to government data. There were about 1.9 million single-parent households in 2020, the latest government data available shows, 81 percent of which were single-mother households.
Given that, many in Spain celebrated the regional court ruling as a step forward for gender parity in a country where the average salary for women is about 24,400 euros, or about $25,000, a year, compared with about €29,400 for men, according to government figures.
In its decision, the court cited 2023 government data that showed that 53 percent of single-parent households were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, compared with 27 percent of all households.
The court case was brought by Silvia Pardo Moreno, 44, who joined the ranks of single mothers in January 2022, when she gave birth to a daughter in Murcia. Ms. Pardo, a part-time worker in an emergency services company, requested 32 weeks of leave from social security, arguing that her daughter should get the same amount of care as her peers.
Ms. Pardo’s request was denied. So she left her 4-month-old daughter in day care to go back to work after 16 weeks.
“There were no children in day care at that age, because the others had the right to have their parents look after them for longer,” she said in an interview after the ruling.
Ms. Pardo went to court but lost. Then she filed an appeal, sending her case up to the regional court. This time, the court ruled in her favor.
Ms. Vall, the lawyer, said that the precedent “gives extra coverage to the single mother, because it gives her four additional months in which she knows she will not be fired from her job.”
“When a single woman decides to be a mother, the difference is, does she have to delegate the care of her baby to someone else, such as a nanny?” Ms. Vall added. “The baby has to be in the care of someone. and the woman has to be protected. In the first year of life, when that mother needs help the most, this benefit is most necessary.”
Ms. Pardo said she did not know how the court would provide her with compensation for her time. But she knows that she cannot get back those early weeks with her daughter, who turns 3 on Friday.
“I have lost time, above all,” she said. “When my daughter needed me the most, she could not have me.”
