Around 5,258 same-sex couples have married in the Canary Islands since the legal reform that recognized equal marriage was approved in Spain in 2005, according to figures compiled by the National Institute of Statistics, which cover up to 2023.
In Spain as a whole, more than 75,000 same-sex couples have married in Spain since the approval of equal marriage, and although they have starred in more unions than them, women have married more than men in the last six years.
Between 2005 and 2023, 75,561 people of the same sex were married: 40,397 marriages of men and 35,164 of women.
In the same period, 3.18 million couples made up of a man and a woman have married.
Twenty years after the approval of the law that allows same-sex couples to marry, 79% of citizens are totally or very in agreement that "it is a positive achievement for society as a whole" and 87.3% consider that it was a first step in achieving the rights of LGTBI+ people.
New trend
Since its entry into force in July 2005 and for a long time, male couples married to a greater extent than female couples, but in 2018 things changed and they began to formalize their relationships more through marriage.
The trend has continued until 2023, the last year for which data is available.
In 2005, 914 male couples and 355 female couples married; the following year, 2006, 3,000 and 1,313, respectively. In the historical series, the maximum number of same-sex unions was recorded in 2023, with 6,772, 3,165 men and 3,607 women.
The autonomous communities in which the most equal marriages have been celebrated between 2005 and 2023 have been Catalonia (15,900), Madrid (14,790), Andalusia (11,809) and the Valencian Community (9,355).
At the other extreme, in the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla only 53 and 56 have been registered in the same period, respectively, while La Rioja (325), Cantabria (647), Navarra (718) and Extremadura (817) complete the list of territories in which less than a thousand same-sex unions have been celebrated.
Asturias (1,098), Aragon (1,172), Castilla y León (1,541), Castilla-La Mancha (1,719), Murcia (1,856), Galicia (2,113), Balearic Islands (2,798), Basque Country (2,850) and the Canary Islands (5,258) are the regions that occupy the middle part of the table.
Although the number of male unions exceeds that of women, there are certain territories where they have married more: Aragon, Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura, Murcia, Navarra, Basque Country, La Rioja and Melilla.
Between 2010 and 2023, the range of years for which this data is available, 9.3% of equal marriages had one of its members with a nationality other than Spanish.
Regarding divorces, between 2013 and 2023, 13,119 same-sex unions have been dissolved, 6,998 male couples and 6,122 women. In that same period, 50,322 same-sex couples married.
Happiness and dignity
The activist Boti García Rodrigo, former director of Sexual Diversity and LGTBI Rights and former president of FELGTB and Cogam, worked to achieve the equal marriage law.
"Marriage not only became a right of all citizens, but equal marriage was an advance for the dignity of the people of the group. Marriage made us worthy of rights," she explains to EFE.
"First, it was made visible in the law that we existed. Second, it was recognized that we were subjects of rights like the rest of the citizens," she defends.
The historical activist explains that this dignity, in weddings, was extended in the form of happiness like "an oil stain" to the whole family: "There was a dignification of those people. You saw the happiness in the grandfather, in the second aunt, in the fathers, in the mothers...".
García Rodrigo celebrates that more and more women are getting married, "a precious piece of information." "Lesbians need more time to come out of the closet because the fears are greater. (...) With the passage of time, lesbians are daring to be more visible and are getting married more," she says.
The current president of the State Federation LGTBI+, Paula Iglesias, asserts that the approval of equal marriage was "a first step" in the recognition of the rights of the group, the first time that it was put on the table that they were first-class citizens, like the rest, and deserved the same rights.
"Beyond being able to marry, it was a recognition of our existences. And that recognition at the legal level helped us to naturalize our lives at the social level, because if we had the same right to marry and form our families, it is that these were worthy and deserving of the same respect," she concludes.