Live News From Spain As It Happens

GREATER practical and financial help for parents is on the cards now that a new 'family law' has passed its second reading in the Council of Ministers, with extended maternity and paternity pay, protected time off for childcare, tax rebates, and a revised definition of households eligible for extra support.

Originally set up by equality minister Ione Belarra in 2023, the legislation is among many others that had to be shelved due to the general elections in July, but looks set to come into force later this year.

Minister for social rights Pablo Bustinduy hopes to bring the new framework into effect as soon as possible, with additional features still under debate expected to be added on in due course.

These features likely to be included at a later date cover maternity and paternity leave being extended from their current 16 weeks to 20 weeks, and for at least four weeks of the present eight a parent can take off work for childcare to be fully paid.

More flexible and modern definition of 'families'

In line with European Union requirements, Spain's new 'family law' redefines the concept of the parent-child unit to ensure greater social and legal protection for those that do not follow the traditional notion of a married heterosexual couple with biological children in common.

The text extends to adoption, stepchildren, guardianship, fostering, children or their primary carers with registered disabilities, same-sex parents, and unmarried cohabiting parents.

Read more at thinkSPAIN:com

A GROUND-BREAKING new customer service law has finally been approved by Spain's Council of Ministers after being shelved for nearly two years.

The right to speak to a human rather than a machine, a limit of three minutes for being kept on hold on the telephone, and a requirement for complaints to be resolved within two weeks are included in the new Law of Customer Assistance Services, which the government began working on in November 2021.

Reason for two-year hold-up

Details were released early the following year, but progress on the legislation reform ground to a halt with socialist president Pedro Sánchez's decision to hold a snap general election in July 2023 in the hope of reinforcing the left-wing leader's mandate following a landslide dive to the right in the earlier regional and local council elections.

Sánchez's gamble paid off, and the socialists (PSOE) will continue in national government until at least mid-2027, along with their left-wing coalition partners Sumar, a regroup of the earlier independent party Unidas Podemos.

It was Unidas Podemos' Alberto Garzón – formerly of United Left – who spearheaded the changes in customer service legislation when he was minister for consumer affairs, and his draft law earned a near-unanimous 'yes' in its first Parliamentary scrutiny: A total of 289 in favour and 54 abstentions, but no votes against.

Coming into effect 'imminently'

Despite the long delay, the final signing-off process and bringing into effect of Garzón's legislation is expected to be straightforward, especially as the new minister for social rights, consumer affairs and Agenda 2030, Pablo Bustinduy, has given the text the nod without requesting any amendments.

Doing so was a strategy to ensure the law would come into force as quickly as possible, with any issues or necessary improvements left for later debate and voting, since Bustinduy considered it imperative to 'end, or at least reduce' the 'general levels of dissatisfaction' among consumers with the service they receive.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com

OUTER space and the Bronze Age do not sit well in the same sentence – they may both have existed at the same time, but anyone based on Earth back then would not have known much, or anything, about what lies beyond.

Yet, inadvertently – or so it is believed – material from space found its way into the craft and tool workshops of Spain back in the 10^th to the 13^th centuries B.C.E. (BC).

Archaeologists have revealed astonishing new information about findings from a dig in Villena, western Alicante province, that have been on display in the local museum for 60 years.

An article published in Science Alert says parts of the 59 objects that form the Tesoro de Villena ('Treasure of Villena') were made with 'extra-terrestrial' substances that long pre-date the humans who used them.

'Communal treasure': “There were no kings and queens back then”

Discovered in 1963, valuable pieces made from gold, silver, amber and iron – mostly jewellery and other decorative items – have been exhibited at Villena Archaeological Museum ever since, but recent analyses of them have unearthed a whole new backstory.

At least two of the 59, manufactured between 1400 and 1200 B.C.E., were made using steel from a meteorite that had fallen to Earth 'approximately a million years ago', explain researchers.

Some of the other 57 may also have been created using space rocks, but so far, detailed studies have only been made of a C-shaped iron bracelet and a gold-plated hollow sphere with a sword handle engraved onto it.

“The link between gold and steel is important, since both elements carry great symbolic and social value,” explains main research author Ignacio Montero Ruiz, who works for the History Institute of Spain.