Bourgeois revolution, liberal State and gender.

The 1870’s civil marriage law

Abstract

This article is about the civil marriage law passed in the month of June, 1870, born in the heat of the September revolution in 1868. For the first time in the Spanish history the State assumed the civil marriage and a prerogative, traditionally dependent of the Catholic Church’s choice, was attributed by the State. Given the novelty and the draught of the law, it would raise an intense debate which would find in gender, in the defense of the status of women from different perspectives, one of the arguments of the speech. On these pages we will talk about the views that were expressed and we will analyse the situation that law provided for Spanish women in relation to the institution of marriage that was ruled by that time.