Spain

After the unexpected victory of the Spanish Socialist Party in 2004, the newly elected Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, moved to end the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage in the country. Despite serious opposition from the Catholic Church, a majority of Spaniards supported the measure, and the Parliament voted 187 to 147 in favor of the freedom to marry. The law states that at least one partner must be a Spanish citizen in order to legally marry, although it also allows couples to marry if they have legal residence in Spain. Following passage and enactment in 2005, Zapatero's said: "We were not the first, but I am sure we will not be the last. After us will come many other countries, driven ... by two unstoppable forces: freedom and equality." In July 2012, after some speculation about repealing the freedom to marry from Spain's new president, the country's Constitutional Court reaffirmed that the freedom to marry was constitutional and ruled that it could not be repealed.