Parental Alienation Syndrome in Spain: opposed by the Government but accepted in the Courts

ABSTRACT

For over fifteen years, Spain has seen the promulgation of feminist-inspired legal frameworks to combat male violence against women and, as a result, Spanish law contains a variety of mechanisms that target male violence. However, the parallel dissemination of the pseudo-scientific concept of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), especially since 2004, has become a tool to stall the enforcement of gender equality legislation. Specifically, PAS is causing severe harm in legal procedures related to marital breakdown. Both the government and the General Council of the Judiciary have taken a stand against the deployment of PAS in the legal system, but the notion of parental alienation is still widely used in family courts. This article analyses the contemporary significance of PAS in Spain. It grounds itself in an examination of key government reports and legal cases, and draws on qualitative survey data from interviews with 20 women who have been either formally accused, or threatened with accusations of parental alienation.

KEYWORDS:

• Parental alienation
• gender violence
• child sexual abuse
• Constitutional Act 1/2004
• Spain

Acknowledgments

I wish to record my thanks to the women interviewed; María del Mar Daza for her advice to improve this article; and Alexandre Paturel for correcting the English version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. According to the databases of the Judicial Documentation Centre in Spain (CENDOJ), the first mentions appear as early as 2002.

2. One of the most well-known is Ignacio Bolaños, who alleges that family mediation helps detect PAS. In 2008, he wrote a PhD on PAS, under the direction of Juan Luís Linares, at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

3. Such as Juan Luís Linares, who founded the School of Family Therapy at the Hospital de Sant Pau de Barcelona. He was the supervisor of Bolaños’ PhD thesis on PAS.

4. A region of Spain with a certain level of autonomy (for example, it has its own civil law); it is also where we carried out most of our empirical investigation.

5. After almost 40 years of Franco’s dictatorship (1939–1975), divorce was legalized in Spain in 1981. The 1981 law established joint parental authority, abolished the legal superiority of the husband and father, established all children (‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’) on an equal footing, and included both compensation and alimony in the legal provisions for separation and divorce. Moreover, the first family courts were created (until the 1980s only ecclesiastical courts could pronounce matrimonial nullity).

6. In 2016, the ‘5th Congress on PAS and joint custody’ was held in León, organized by associations of divorced fathers, with the support of the public authorities of the Junta de Castilla y León.

7. The ‘Consejo General del Poder Judicial’ (CGPJ) is the constitutional governing body of the Spanish judiciary.

8. This working group operated between July 2009 and April 2010. The Ministry of Equality was closed under the government of Mr. Zapatero’s Socialist Party in 2011.

9. Following the proposal of the parliamentary group ‘Catalunya Sí que es Pot’ (left), plenary session 25/07/2017: https://www.parlament.cat/document/altres-publicacions/228925.pdf.

10. Like Juana Rivas, María Salmerón and women of the ‘Infancia Libre’ NGO (to name a few well-known cases).