Tag Archives: Country: Spain

Breitbart (also on the Drudge Report) : A woman in Spain recently gave birth to the first child born in the village of Los Giles in 45 years, causing a stir in the village.

Telegraph: The Islamic Society of North America, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, has published an article that calls Andalusia – the hottest bit of Spain – a “paradise” that will return when “the only victor is Allah.”

Turtle Bay and Beyond: French parents who wish to pass on certain values to their children will clash in the coming months over the Republic’s education system, which the current Government wishes to reform, particularly in relation to the complementary …

Washington Times: Jorge Fernandez Diaz made the comments — that gay unions don’t guarantee “the survival of the species,” United Press International reported — as Spain’s highest court upheld same-sex unions as constitutional. Gay activists were outraged.

Religion Clause Blog: ANSAMED reports that on Thursday the Supreme Court of Spain overturned a local ban on clothing that covers the face, such as the burqa

Gatestone Institute: Spain has acceded to the demands of the Islamist government in Morocco by agreeing that Moroccan children adopted by Spanish families must remain culturally and religiously Muslim.

Gatestone Institute: The Spanish government has warned a political refugee that he faces deportation for making a documentary critical of Islam.

AP: Maria Menendez, a 25-year-old caught in Spain’s job-destroying economic crisis, would love to work in Germany as a veterinarian. Germany, facing an acute shortage of skilled workers, would love to have her. A perfect match, it seems, but something’s holding her back: She doesn’t speak German.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: In Spain, the Constitutional Court has irremediably devalued the Constitution of which it was supposed to be the guardian by stating that the law that allows same-sex marriage was not unconstitutional.

Washington Post: Spain’s Constitutional Court upheld the legality of the country’s gay marriage law on Tuesday, rejecting an appeal contending that marriage in the Spanish constitution means only the union of a man and woman.

AP: Spain’s Constitutional Court is expected to rule on an appeal against the country’s gay marriage law, seven years after the legislation was approved.

LifeSiteNews: Footage from a hidden video camera leaked to LifeSiteNews.com shows a doctor at a historically Catholic Barcelona hospital recommending a Down syndrome test to a pregnant woman so that she can abort the child if the result is positive.

Reuters: Violent protests in Madrid and growing talk of secession in Catalonia are piling pressure on Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy as he moves closer to asking Europe for rescue money.

NY Times: Such survival tactics are becoming increasingly commonplace here, with an unemployment rate over 50 percent among young people and more and more households having adults without jobs.

The World: In Spain a liberalized abortion law could soon be amended, making the procedure once again criminal. In 2006 Spain’s then-socialist government changed the law, allowing any woman to get an abortion up until 14 weeks. Now the conservatives are back in power, and they want the restrictions back too.

Benjamin Bull at Townhall: There is a movement underway in Europe to remove the tax exemptions churches have enjoyed for centuries. In Spain and Italy this attempt is being broadly pursued, while in Britain it is being done piecemeal.

AP: Unemployment in France is 10 percent, but nearly 23 percent for those under the age of 25 . . . In Spain, youth unemployment is over 52 percent; it’s 34 percent in Italy.

Catholic Culture: Spanish fertility clinics account for roughly one-third of all the in vitro fertilization procedures undertaken in Europe . . .

AFP on Yahoo: Spain’s conservative government has provoked a storm among women’s groups with plans to tighten abortion laws to make the procedure illegal in cases where the foetus is deformed.

LifeSiteNews: Spain’s justice minister, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, has announced that upcoming legislation reform of the country’s laws governing abortions will eliminate fetal deformity as a basis for killing the unborn.

LifeNews: A mother in Spain has died who postponed her cancer treatments in order to save the life of her unborn baby. As EWTN reports, Barbara Castro Garcia, a journalist who worked for the Diocese of Cordoba in Spain, died on July 4.

Gatestone Institute: The report, which examines some of the main Islamist groups operating in Spain, shows that the common thread linking all the groups together is their mutual desire to establish an Islamic Caliphate.

AP: The chief justice of Spain’s Supreme Court resigned Thursday amid allegations that he billed the government for dozens of private trips to seaside resorts.

Piero Tozzi at C-FAM: As pro-life and pro-family leaders from around the world gathered in Madrid over the last weekend in May for the Sixth World Congress of Families, the man of the hour was clearly Bishop Juan Antonio Reig Pla. The Spanish bishop’s plainspoken honesty regarding the destructiveness of homosexual acts in the months leading up to the Congress earned him the enmity of leftwing rights activists and a standing ovation from conference participants.

Telegraph: A judge on the island of Majorca ordered the unnamed gynaecologist to pay the mother 150,000 euros (£120,000) in “moral damages” for his negligence and a monthly maintenance of 978 euros (£780) until the child reaches its 26th birthday.

PR Newswire: WCF VI is organized by HazteOir.org (the local host committee) and The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society. Co-conveners for WCF VI in Madrid include Alliance Defense Fund, Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute and Focus on the Family. World Congress of Families is also supported annually by our 35 partners, in 11 countries. Click here for a complete list of WCF Partners.

LifeSiteNews: The Sixth World Congress of Families (WCF) Conference is set to take place at Madrid’s Palacio de Congresos, May 25-27, 2012, and is expected to be the largest nondenominational, international gathering of pro-family leaders, scholars, researchers, officials and activists at this venue since the inaugural conference took place in 1997.

LifeSiteNews: A trio of socialist political parties in the government of Alcalá de Henares, Spain, has passed a resolution demanding the exclusion of the local bishop from all local government functions for preaching the Catholic Church’s doctrines on homosexual behavior, which it characterizes as “homophobic.”

Greg Puppinck at Turtle Bay and Beyond: Yesterday, the European Court of Human Rights published a judgment in the important case of Fernandez-Martínez c. Espagne (application no 56030/07), in which it concluded by six votes to one that “the choice of the bishop not to renew the contract of a teacher who is a married priest and activist of the Pro-Optional Celibacy Movement comes under the principle of religious freedom, as protected by the Convention.”

Washington Post reports.

Ben Bull at Townhall: Efforts are currently underway in Spain to criminally prosecute Catholic Bishop Juan Antonio Reig Plà of the diocese of Alcalá de Henares. It seems he had the audacity to deliver a homily from the Bible during a Good Friday mass extolling the virtues of the sinless life. And as bad as this was—reading aloud from the Bible on Good Friday and all—everything he did was acceptable until he included “homosexual behavior” as one of the sins to be avoided.

LifeSiteNews: Homosexual groups are seeking the prosecution of a Spanish bishop after he gave a sermon repeating the Catholic Church’s teaching associating the gay lifestyle with the suffering of hell, and then an interview in which he endorsed psychological treatment for homosexual behavior.

Telegraph: Spain’s new conservative government has announced plans to tighten the country’s abortion laws provoking a storm among women’s groups.

LifeSiteNews.com: The Council of Europe has revealed that sex-selective abortion is widely practiced in Albania and the result is a growing gulf between the numbers of boys and the number of girls.

LifeSiteNews.com: Experts working for the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics at the University of Barcelona, Spain, are calling for a national registry of doctors who will not perform abortions, in order to “improve” women’s access to “pregnancy termination.”

Turtle Bay and Beyond: After the passage of Spain’s liberal abortion law in 2010 the government began subsidizing abortion on demand, providing it at no cost to the mother.

CNN.com: Spain’s best-known judge will be suspended for 11 years from the bench after his conviction Thursday for improperly ordering wiretaps while investigating a financial corruption case, the nation’s Supreme Court ruled.

Catholic Culture: The nation’s constitutional court has not yet ruled on an appeal that claims the 2005 law is unconstitutional.

LifeSiteNews.com: rotesters demonstrating against abortions being carried out in Barcelona-area Catholic hospitals were attacked by an angry mob pro-abortion counter-demonstrators, some of whom reportedly threw rocks and trash, as well as obscene insults.

News from The Associated Press: Spain’s new justice minister says he will reform the country’s abortion law to make parental permission obligatory for 16- and 17-year-olds looking to end pregnancies

CNBC: Standard & Poor’s will cut the credit ratings of Italy, Spain and Portugal by two notches and downgrade France and Austria by one notch, a French newspaper said Friday, without citing its sources.

LifeSiteNews.com: A campaign waged by homosexuals in Spain to suppress a book about reparative therapy for homosexuality has backfired, generating media coverage that has drawn new attention to the formerly ignored work.

Turtle Bay and Beyond – International Law, Policy, and Institutions: It was predictable that Spain’s parliamentary elections last November would end in victory for Spain’s conservative People’s Party after the abject failure of the Spanish Socialist Party in combating rising unemployment and languid economic growth during the economic crisis.

LifeSiteNews.com: Use of the abortifacient morning-after pill in Spain has risen by 83% in 2010, the first full year of over-the-counter availability of the dangerous drug, according to a report by ANSAmed news service.

World Congres of Families on the Christian Newswire: Spain’s Popular Party won a historic conservative victory in Sunday’s election and the ruling Socialists suffered their worst defeat in 30 years.

CSMonitor.com (includes video): Spaniards handed the conservative Popular Party a historic landslide victory and the incumbent Socialist Party its worst defeat in history in this weekend’s general elections, highlighting their overwhelming dissatisfaction with the status quo and a demand for new leadership that could help the country climb out of its worst economic crisis in decades.

Catholic Culture: The leader of Spain’s opposition party–who is favored to win general elections–may move to reverse the legal approval of same-sex marriage and the decriminalization of abortion.

LifeSiteNews.com: Despite orders from Cardinal Archbishop Lluís Martínez Sistach and continuing protests, Barcelona’s Holy Cross and Saint Paul (Santa Creu i Sant Pau) Hospital continues to do abortions, according to Rev. Custodio Ballester, a Barcelona priest who recently discussed the matter with a member of the hospital’s board of directors.

Christian Newswire: A judge dismissed the case against a homeschool family in southern Spain that was facing a possible order to send their son back to school. “This is an important victory for the González family and homeschoolers in Spain,” said Michael Donnelly, Director of International Relations at the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA).

HSLDA: The González family, who reside near Alicante, Spain, were giving thanks to God and to HSLDA after a judge dismissed their case this week. The family were facing a possible order to send their child back to school after prosecutors brought the case over homeschooling. HSLDA filed a brief and spearheaded an international petition for the family.

The Independent: A small town on the Spanish resort island of Mallorca has banned women from wearing burkas or face-covering Islamic veils in public places, even though only two women living there are known to do so.

PressTV: A northeastern Spain municipality with a 40-percent Muslim population has reportedly banned the Muslim call to prayer also known as Azan.

LifeSiteNews.com: The bishop of Terrassa, in the Catalonia region of Spain, is maintaining his silence in the face of the pro-abortion and pro-contraceptive policies of Catholic hospitals in his diocese, according to Fr. Custodio Ballester, a Barcelona priest who is leading protests against the institutions.

NZ Herald News: Spanish police have foiled plans by 100 gays and lesbians to stage a kiss-in on the route the visiting Pope Benedict XVI took through Madrid, blocking the protesters before they could meet up.

LifeSiteNews.com:
Spain’s government is systematically violating the conscience rights of health care workers on abortion, says a group of legal experts that is now taking action to restore those rights.

Religion Clause: In Spain, a Catholic member of Parliament, Juan Cotino, provoked some criticism when he insisted on taking his oath of office using a crucifix. CNA yesterday reported

LifeSiteNews.com: Over eight thousand Paraguayans have joined themselves to a Facebook page with a simple message: Spain’s pro-abortion “Secretary of Equality” isn’t welcome in their country.

Yahoo News: Spain’s ability to meet deficit reduction targets was thrown into doubt on Monday after voters angry about austerity and the EU’s highest unemployment rate gave the ruling Socialists a fierce drubbing in local elections.

Telegraph: A Romanian couple have been arrested in southern Spain for trying to sell their baby to passersby.

AP: “A court has barred atheists from holding a march on Holy Thursday, saying that would be offensive to Spanish Catholics who mark Easter with processions of their own.”

Islamist Watch: Though France is the pace setter, efforts to impose burqa bans, both broad and narrow, press on across the West. The following is a quick and by no means exhaustive update on recent attempts . . .

The Telegraph: A Spanish GP who opposes abortion has been refused the status of “conscientious objector” in a landmark ruling in Spain.

FRC Event: However, Rodriguez Zapatero is not exactly an anomaly in the twenty-first century. Quite the contrary, in fact. He shares a common project with thinkers and politicians who are working in other countries to introduce an archetype of society similar to that proposed by Zapatero. They are the secularists, relativists, radical feminists, abortionists, representatives of the homosexual lobby and totalitarians of all stripes and colors. They have gained considerable ground in recent decades.

LifeSitenews: “An estimated 150,000-plus pro-lifers gathered to celebrate life and protest a new abortion law in Madrid on Sunday. Hundreds of others marched in over 80 Spanish cities, including Barcelona, Oviedo, Zaragoza and Las Palmas, and internationally on March 25 as part of recognition for the International Day of the Unborn Child.”

AndaluciaEduca (Google Translation): A total of 371 Spanish have sued the state before the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg for “violation of fundamental rights in respect of objection to the subjects of Education for Citizenship and Human Rights.” Professionals for Ethics, which has submitted the claims along with Alliance Defense Fund, stated that the applicants, conscientious objectors to EPC, “allege the violation by the Spanish state of several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights . . . ”

CNA (Google Translation): The Spanish platform Professionals for Ethics (PPE), which has filed claims with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), an entity specializing in the defense of human rights, has indicated that the applicants, EPC conscientious objectors ” allege a violation by the Spanish state of several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights. ”

Hazteoir.org (Google Translation): Recalling that the lawsuits were filed by Professionals for Ethics and Alliance Defense Fund , with legal assistance from the European Centre for Law and Justice , the information in A. Matthew states that the Spanish families who have appeared before the ECHR “argue that Spain has violated several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights : right to privacy of minors (art. 8), freedom of thought, conscience and religion children and their parents (art. 9); right of parents to educate their children according to their convictions (Article 2 of Protocol I) and non-discrimination (art. 14).

Europapress.es (Google translation): Professional ethics, has filed claims with aa Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), an entity specializing in the defense of human rights, has indicated that the applicants, conscientious objectors to EPC, “allege the violation by the Spanish state of several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights (right to privacy of minors, freedom of thought, conscience and religion of children and their parents, the right of parents to educate their children according to their convictions; and non-discrimination). ”

LavozLibre (Translation from Spanish by Google): “Families objectors to Education for Citizenship ( EPC ) does not give up their struggle. Although in Spain the Supreme Court has ruled against their interests, they continue their battle in Strasbourg where the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and accumulated 371 lawsuits against the Spanish for “violation of fundamental rights.” . . . Demands, by Professionals for Ethics and Alliance Defense Fund , argue that Spain has violated several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights . . . ”

Associated Press: “A Spanish association of people searching for lost children or parents filed a petition Thursday with the attorney general to investigate allegations that newborns were stolen from their mothers and sold to other families for decades, including as recently as the mid-1990s.”

Associated Press: “A court in the northeastern Spanish region of Catalonia has suspended a ban by the city of Lleida on face-covering Islamic veils in municipal buildings.”

Catholic News Agency: “The association Professionals for Ethics in Spain announced that 3,000 Spaniards have written to the country’s Minister of Health, Leire Pajin, demanding that she respect the right of health care workers to object to abortion and euthanasia.”

Yahoo (AFP): “The Spanish city of Barcelona will erect a monument to gays, lesbians and transgendered people who have been persecuted and repressed ‘throughout history’, it announced Thursday.”

Typically Spanish: “The Partido Popular leader, Mariano Rajoy, is now saying that before overturning gay marriage legislation in Spain he will wait to see what the Constitutional Court decides over the appeal placed to it by his party. Rajoy says he will also see what the people think before eliminating the law which allows couples of the same sex to get married.”

Pajamas Media: “Consider the case of the student at the Menéndez Tolosa school in Cadiz who this week asked his geography teacher to stop discussing ham in class because it was disrespctful to him as a Muslim. It should be noted that the teacher, José Reyes Fernández, was not mocking the Koran’s prohibition against eating ham. What was so offensive to the student was Fernández’s use of the Granada town of Trevélez as an example of a cold moutain climate conducive to the curings of hams.”