Concha Sierra, Spain's most prestigious expert in marital law, gave a talk in the series of Friday lectures organised by the FCC Volunteer programme in cooperation with the Esther Koplowitz foundation at the Nuestra Casa retirement home in Villalba.

The speaker, who holds the highest distinctions in the field of law in Spain as well as the Madrid Regional Government gold medal, discussed the steady improvement in women's rights under Spanish civil law.

Under the title "Things were not better in the old days", Concha Sierra discussed women's legal status under the previous legislation, in which they were dependent upon their husbands, and the attainment of equal rights under the 1978 Constitution. Reading from a copy of the Constitution signed by Professor Antonio Hernández Gil, who was Speaker of the Spanish Parliament at the time, Sierra had particular praise for articles 14 and 32 of the document, which establish that all persons have equal rights and that spouses have equal rights in a marriage.

She also spoke out strongly against the current problem of gender violence. Concha Sierra, who is a member of the Regional Observatory against Gender Violence, recounted her own professional experience with a client in the early 1970s: a battered wife with one child who was separated from her husband but was ultimately murdered by the latter.

Sierra concluded with a question and answer session in which such issues as child custody and gender violence were discussed.