After my recent post about the age limit for seeing a doctor in Spain unaccompanied by your Mum (16 see here), I got one or two queries about age limits. I did a bit of research and collected them together in an article on the Advoco website called "They Grow Up So Fast. Age Limits in Spain".
I didn't know half of them before I began researching the piece and was more than a little surprised by the news that the age of consent was 13, gay or straight. That seems a bit young to me. Most countries around the world go for Britain's 16 or even higher:
In these liberal days I suppose I should applaud the intent: to let young people decide for themselves when they are ready and leave the law out of it.
There are two arguments for having a higher age of consent though, both of which have some merit:
(1) kids are not emotionally mature enough at 13 to know what they want or to handle the responsibility and complications that come with young love. By letting them loose too young you risk more lives ruined with teenage pregnancies not too mention more STDs.
(2) young teenagers have no protection from sexual predators outside of their age group, either the classic "dirty old men" or fellow teenagers a few years up the food chain. I wonder ifall the liberal intent of parents who favour the lower limit would go out of the window if they saw a 50 year old stranger buying their 13 year old son or daughter a drink and chatting them up.
Being branded a molester is a strong deterrent for men (and women I suppose) making inappropriate advances to young teenagers and pressuring them. It is interesting to note that Jonathan King, the pop impresario jailed for sleeping with 14 and 15 year old boys in the UK, would have had the full blessing of the law in Spain.
Over on the Rock of Gibraltar there is a debate going on in a different direction: the Gib Women's Association want to raise the age of consent from 16 to 18.
