First same-sex marriage in Spain
Encyclopedia
The first same-sex marriage in Spain after the Roman Imperial era took place on June 8, 1901.
Two women, Marcela Gracia Ibeas and Elisa Sanchez Loriga, attempted to get married in A Coruña
(Galicia, Spain
). To achieve it Elisa had to adopt a male identity: Mario Sánchez, as listed on the marriage certificate. It is the first attempt at same-sex marriage in Spain for which there is recorded evidence. It was performed by the Church, in the parish church of St. Jorge of the same city. Subsequently the parish priest discovered the deception, and was denounced and persecuted. Nevertheless, the marriage certificate was never annulled
.
Their matrimonial union took place more than 100 years before the law would permit gay Spanish people to get married. The two worked as teachers
at a time when the vast majority of the Galician population was illiterate.
This event could be considered a precedent for same-sex marriage in Spain
. News of their wedding was spread to all Spain and to various European countries. The couple is believed to have escaped to Argentina
, and it is unknown what happened to them after that.
and fearing a possible scandal, sent their daughter to Madrid
. Time went by and both, one in A Coruña and the other in Madrid, finished their studies. They were reunited again when Elisa was appointed as a temporary teacher at Couso, a small parish of Coristanco
in A Coruña. Nearby, in Vimianzo
, in the village of Calo, Marcela established herself already as a superior teacher. As a consequence of the same, they decided to live together in Calo, where Elisa worked. In 1889, Marcela had to go to teach classes at Dumbría
while Elisa remained in Calo, but they stayed in contact until Elisa moved to the town where Marcela lived.
and that her father was an atheist. Considering this last circumstance, the father Cortiella, parish priest of San Jorge, baptized Mario on 26 May 1901 (furthermore, he received first communion), and subsequently married the couple on 8 June 1901 after the publication of the banns. The marriage ceremony was short; the sponsors bore witness to its validity; and the couple passed the night of the wedding in the boarding house Corcubión, on the street of San Andrés.
whose condition had been diagnosed in London. The Civil Guard
pursued the couple to the town of Dumbrías, where they both worked as teachers. There is evidence that they passed for Vigo and Oporto in their escape. The last that is known of them is that they managed to board a ship destined for America (possibly Argentina, as so many other Spaniards of the era), where they spent their honeymoon and, finally, stayed to live. One of the cases that one of the courts took against them was closed. Several years later, some residents of Dumbría spread a rumour about the death of Elisa and the subsequent marriage of Marcela to a man. This rumour has not been confirmed.
It is possible to stress that the wedding, according to the Diocesan Archive, is still valid. Neither the Church nor the civil registry
annulled the marriage certificates, so this is the first recorded same-sex marriage
in Spain.
On 18 December 2008, the book Elisa e Marcela - Alén dos homes (Elisa and Marcela - Beyond men) was published in A Coruña
. The 300-page book, written in Galacian, tells the story of the two women from the time they fled Coruña in 1901 until 1904. It narrates the events in Porto
, Portugal
, where they were imprisoned, tried, and later released. They fled to Argentina after the Spanish government demanded their extradition from Portugal.
Before leaving Porto for the Americas, Marcela gave birth to a girl. After they landed in Buenos Aires, Elisa (under the alias of Maria) married Christian Jensen, a man 24 years her senior, in 1903. Marcela, under the alias of Carmen, stayed there with his sister and her daughter.
After time, when Elisa refused to consummate the marriage with Christian, he became suspicious. Upon investigation, he discovered that Maria and Carmen were in fact Elisa and Marcela, which the press had realised long ago.
Once again, the courts were faced with trying to annul Jensen's marriage. Since the marriage was between a man and a woman, and therefore valid, no charges were brought against Elisa. After that time, in 1904, there no further record of Marcela and Elisa.
Isaías Lafuente (editor in chief of Cadena SER
), in his book Agrupémonos Todas, looks at the highlights of feminism
in the twentieth century and indicates the story of Marcela and Elisa as one of the most significant events related to the movement occurring in Galicia (another is the figure of Emilia Pardo Bazán
).
The group Milhomes founded the Marcela and Elisa Award, which, with the help of the FELGTB, is already in its sixth edition. They also claim a long street with their name in A Coruña
, with little success so far.
In 1902 the book La sed de amar, by the Extremadura
n writer Felipe Trigo, was published in Spain. This was a book of great impact in that period. It includes the story of Marcela and Elisa, using the names of Rosa and Claudia, respectively. The profile of these two women and the story of their relationship is transcribed to the fiction of the book with almost total equivalence to the real story. Felipe Trigo's own footnotes in one edition of the book state that the story is real and happened in A Coruña
in 1901.
in Spain
occurred on April 16, 1061. They were married by a priest at a small chapel. The historic documents about the church wedding were found at Monastery of San Salvador de Celanova
.
, Madrid
, between Emilio Menendez and Carlos Baturin, who had lived as a couple for more than thirty years. The first marriage of two women under the law was 11 days later, in Barcelona
.
Two women, Marcela Gracia Ibeas and Elisa Sanchez Loriga, attempted to get married in A Coruña
A Coruña
A Coruña or La Coruña is a city and municipality of Galicia, Spain. It is the second-largest city in the autonomous community and seventeenth overall in the country...
(Galicia, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
). To achieve it Elisa had to adopt a male identity: Mario Sánchez, as listed on the marriage certificate. It is the first attempt at same-sex marriage in Spain for which there is recorded evidence. It was performed by the Church, in the parish church of St. Jorge of the same city. Subsequently the parish priest discovered the deception, and was denounced and persecuted. Nevertheless, the marriage certificate was never annulled
Annulment
Annulment is a legal procedure for declaring a marriage null and void. Unlike divorce, it is usually retroactive, meaning that an annulled marriage is considered to be invalid from the beginning almost as if it had never taken place...
.
Their matrimonial union took place more than 100 years before the law would permit gay Spanish people to get married. The two worked as teachers
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
at a time when the vast majority of the Galician population was illiterate.
This event could be considered a precedent for same-sex marriage in Spain
Same-sex marriage in Spain
Same-sex marriage in Spain has been legal since July 3, 2005. In 2004, the nation's newly elected social democratic government, led by President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, began a campaign for its legalization, including the right of adoption by same-sex couples...
. News of their wedding was spread to all Spain and to various European countries. The couple is believed to have escaped to Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, and it is unknown what happened to them after that.
First encounter, separation and reunion
Marcela and Elisa met while studying in the Teacher-Training College for Teachers in A Coruña, where the future teachers of elementary education were educated. Their friendship gave way to a more intimate relationship. Marcela's parents, seeing that the friendship was growing beyond that socially permittedSexual norm
A sexual norm can refer to a personal or a social norm. Most cultures have social norms regarding sexuality, and define normal sexuality to consist only of certain legal sex acts between individuals who meet specific criteria of age, consanguinity , race/ethnicity A sexual norm can refer to a...
and fearing a possible scandal, sent their daughter to Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
. Time went by and both, one in A Coruña and the other in Madrid, finished their studies. They were reunited again when Elisa was appointed as a temporary teacher at Couso, a small parish of Coristanco
Coristanco
Coristanco is a municipality of Spain in the Province of A Coruña, in the autonomous community of Galicia....
in A Coruña. Nearby, in Vimianzo
Vimianzo
Vimianzo is a municipality of Spain in the Province of A Coruña, in the autonomous community of Galicia....
, in the village of Calo, Marcela established herself already as a superior teacher. As a consequence of the same, they decided to live together in Calo, where Elisa worked. In 1889, Marcela had to go to teach classes at Dumbría
Dumbría
Dumbría is a municipality of Spain in the Province of A Coruña, in the autonomous community of Galicia....
while Elisa remained in Calo, but they stayed in contact until Elisa moved to the town where Marcela lived.
False identity and marriage
In 1901, Elisa adopted a masculine appearance (with which she appeared in the Teaching College to apply for a certificate of study), fabricated a past, and was transformed into Mario. For this invented past, she took as reference a cousin of hers killed in a shipwreck. Futhermore, she made up that she had passed her childhood in LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and that her father was an atheist. Considering this last circumstance, the father Cortiella, parish priest of San Jorge, baptized Mario on 26 May 1901 (furthermore, he received first communion), and subsequently married the couple on 8 June 1901 after the publication of the banns. The marriage ceremony was short; the sponsors bore witness to its validity; and the couple passed the night of the wedding in the boarding house Corcubión, on the street of San Andrés.
Consequences
Finally, the neighbours could not remain indifferent as before, with what was at the moment known as a "marriage without man". The couple were exposed by Galician and Madrid newspapers and, as a consequence of this, both quickly lost their jobs, were excommunicated, and were issued an arrest warrant. It appears that, so that the excommunication could take place, the parish priest requested a doctor examine Mario to check if he was a man or a woman. Mario agreed. When the doctor issued his verdict, Mario attempted to pass for a hermaphroditeHermaphrodite
In biology, a hermaphrodite is an organism that has reproductive organs normally associated with both male and female sexes.Many taxonomic groups of animals do not have separate sexes. In these groups, hermaphroditism is a normal condition, enabling a form of sexual reproduction in which both...
whose condition had been diagnosed in London. The Civil Guard
Civil Guard (Spain)
The Civil Guard is the Spanish gendarmerie. It has foreign peace-keeping missions and maintains military status and is the equivalent of a federal military-status police force. As a police force, the Guardia Civil is comparable today to the French Gendarmerie, the Italian Carabinieri and the...
pursued the couple to the town of Dumbrías, where they both worked as teachers. There is evidence that they passed for Vigo and Oporto in their escape. The last that is known of them is that they managed to board a ship destined for America (possibly Argentina, as so many other Spaniards of the era), where they spent their honeymoon and, finally, stayed to live. One of the cases that one of the courts took against them was closed. Several years later, some residents of Dumbría spread a rumour about the death of Elisa and the subsequent marriage of Marcela to a man. This rumour has not been confirmed.
It is possible to stress that the wedding, according to the Diocesan Archive, is still valid. Neither the Church nor the civil registry
Civil registry
Civil registration is the system by which a government records the vital events of its citizens and residents. The resulting repository or database is called civil register or registry, or population registry. The primary purpose of civil registration is to create legal documents that are used to...
annulled the marriage certificates, so this is the first recorded same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage is marriage between two persons of the same biological sex or social gender. Supporters of legal recognition for same-sex marriage typically refer to such recognition as marriage equality....
in Spain.
On 18 December 2008, the book Elisa e Marcela - Alén dos homes (Elisa and Marcela - Beyond men) was published in A Coruña
A Coruña
A Coruña or La Coruña is a city and municipality of Galicia, Spain. It is the second-largest city in the autonomous community and seventeenth overall in the country...
. The 300-page book, written in Galacian, tells the story of the two women from the time they fled Coruña in 1901 until 1904. It narrates the events in Porto
Porto
Porto , also known as Oporto in English, is the second largest city in Portugal and one of the major urban areas in the Iberian Peninsula. Its administrative limits include a population of 237,559 inhabitants distributed within 15 civil parishes...
, Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, where they were imprisoned, tried, and later released. They fled to Argentina after the Spanish government demanded their extradition from Portugal.
Before leaving Porto for the Americas, Marcela gave birth to a girl. After they landed in Buenos Aires, Elisa (under the alias of Maria) married Christian Jensen, a man 24 years her senior, in 1903. Marcela, under the alias of Carmen, stayed there with his sister and her daughter.
After time, when Elisa refused to consummate the marriage with Christian, he became suspicious. Upon investigation, he discovered that Maria and Carmen were in fact Elisa and Marcela, which the press had realised long ago.
Once again, the courts were faced with trying to annul Jensen's marriage. Since the marriage was between a man and a woman, and therefore valid, no charges were brought against Elisa. After that time, in 1904, there no further record of Marcela and Elisa.
Social and legal impact
Nowadays this event is considered one of the oldest precursors to same-sex marriage in Spain. In the media the courage of these two women is emphasized, stressing that they went into history as the first gay marriage in Spain.Isaías Lafuente (editor in chief of Cadena SER
Cadena SER
La Cadena SER is Spain's premier radio network in terms of both seniority and audience share...
), in his book Agrupémonos Todas, looks at the highlights of feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
in the twentieth century and indicates the story of Marcela and Elisa as one of the most significant events related to the movement occurring in Galicia (another is the figure of Emilia Pardo Bazán
Emilia Pardo Bazán
Emilia Pardo Bazán was a Spanish author and scholar from Galicia.-Life:...
).
The group Milhomes founded the Marcela and Elisa Award, which, with the help of the FELGTB, is already in its sixth edition. They also claim a long street with their name in A Coruña
A Coruña
A Coruña or La Coruña is a city and municipality of Galicia, Spain. It is the second-largest city in the autonomous community and seventeenth overall in the country...
, with little success so far.
In 1902 the book La sed de amar, by the Extremadura
Extremadura
Extremadura is an autonomous community of western Spain whose capital city is Mérida. Its component provinces are Cáceres and Badajoz. It is bordered by Portugal to the west...
n writer Felipe Trigo, was published in Spain. This was a book of great impact in that period. It includes the story of Marcela and Elisa, using the names of Rosa and Claudia, respectively. The profile of these two women and the story of their relationship is transcribed to the fiction of the book with almost total equivalence to the real story. Felipe Trigo's own footnotes in one edition of the book state that the story is real and happened in A Coruña
A Coruña
A Coruña or La Coruña is a city and municipality of Galicia, Spain. It is the second-largest city in the autonomous community and seventeenth overall in the country...
in 1901.
Very first documented same-sex marriage in 1061
A same-sex marriage between the two men Pedro Díaz and Muño Vandilaz in the Galician municipality of Rairiz de VeigaRairiz de Veiga
Rairiz de Veiga is a municipality in Ourense in the Galicia region of north-west Spain. It is located in the centre of the province towards the south-west....
in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
occurred on April 16, 1061. They were married by a priest at a small chapel. The historic documents about the church wedding were found at Monastery of San Salvador de Celanova
Monastery of San Salvador de Celanova
The monastery of San Salvador de Celanova is a religious complex in Celanova, Galicia, Spain. It was founded by St. Rudesind in 936. The jewel of the complex is the small mozarabic chapel of San Miguel, dating from 942....
.
First legal same-sex marriage in 2005
Although the first known attempt at same-sex marriage is that of Marcela and Elisa, same-sex marriage was legalized in Spain in 2005, by law 13/2005. The first legal same-sex marriage in Spain took place on July 11 of that year, in Tres CantosTres Cantos
Tres Cantos is a township and municipality located in the autonomous community of Madrid, Spain, some 22 km north of the capital city, Madrid. As a "satellite city" of Madrid which was conceived by urban planners as recently as the 1970s, it is the youngest incorporated municipality in Spain, with...
, Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, between Emilio Menendez and Carlos Baturin, who had lived as a couple for more than thirty years. The first marriage of two women under the law was 11 days later, in Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
.
See also
- Timeline of same-sex marriageTimeline of same-sex marriageThis page contains a timeline of significant events regarding same-sex marriage and legal recognition of same-sex couples worldwide in modern history, followed by a timeline of notable same-sex marriages and unions. Also, events concerning same-sex marriages are listed in bold.-2011:* October 25: ...
- Same-sex marriage in SpainSame-sex marriage in SpainSame-sex marriage in Spain has been legal since July 3, 2005. In 2004, the nation's newly elected social democratic government, led by President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, began a campaign for its legalization, including the right of adoption by same-sex couples...
- LGBT rights in Spain