Hello, everybody,
My name is Rafael, and I have been following the different list discussions for a few weeks now. Julian suggested me to just show up and say there is also people in Spain on the same boat and with similar problems that you in the list. The case that Julian put forward (this guy in Spain that had a really bad experience) is just one between too many.
After reading a few of your messages, I realize that:
1) We share the same problems in Spain.
2) We have different legislations, but the application of them whatsoever seem always to be in the detriment of men.
3) Unlike in other countries, men in Spain have not yet reached the point in which they do not care that everybody around them knows about their family problems. Too many still hide them, perhaps fearing to be socially stigmatized. However, times, they are o'changing -also in this country, and quite a few even dare to report being battered by their wives: something unthinkable let's say ten years ago. The policemen do not longer laugh at them when they do...
4) Our statistics of separations and divorce show that we have a number of separation or divorce cases per year which accounts for some 50% of the number of total annual weddings. Quite a figure.
5) Women have been legally granted absolute power on the children of a broken marriage. Only 1% of the fathers obtain custody (roughly the cases in which women reject custody). There is a kind of massive feeling of social guilt towards women that leads most people to accept the institutional privileged treatment that the goverment (and the opposite parties) grant to women in many ways. When a man suffers deprivation of his children, he will not normally have neither legal nor social support: all media will ignore him; judges will continue to privelege his ex wife and he would end up by accepting isolation or else, forgetting his children and starting again from scratch.
6)... and, by the way, female solicitors are heartily recommended: judges of family (that is what they are called in Spain) are mainly women, and normally they would give more credibility to a female solicitor than to a man. You just have to be lucky enough to choose a good professional who cares, but then, this is sometimes difficult to find whatever the gender is.
I just want to thank you all for your contributions on the list, and also Julian for his support in different forums and his constructive ideas. I guess I may be more a reader than a contributor to euro-dads &mums, but if I can help somehow, I will try.
Rafael Mara��n.
Comment : Why is the pattern so similar in the Western World ?