1. INTRODUCTION

The principle of the best interest of the child has been the main criterion behind the legal reforms and judicial and institutional practices in relation to the protection and rights of children in Spain since the 1987 Law on Fostering and Adoption, followed some years later by the Organic Law of 1996 for the Protection of Minors. Several local laws were also enacted in the autonomous regions of Spain during the 1990s and the beginning of the twenty-first century, addressing the protection and rights of children. More recently, two national laws were passed in 2015: Organic Law 8/2015 and Law 26/2015, both of which introduced some changes in the field of the protection of minors. Finally, Organic Law 8/2021 of 4 June has very recently been passed by the Spanish parliament, and published in the official gazette. This law, on the protection of infants and adolescents against all forms of violence, will come into effect in 2022.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child came into effect in Spain on 2 September 1990. The subsequent legal changes took place within the framework of the Convention. Article 3, one of the most important articles in the Convention, establishes that:

At the time, the issue of the extent of children’s rights was under discussion in Spain. The influence of scholars and experts from other countries, such as John Eekelaar, played a very significant role in ensuring that the rights of children were respected in legal and social practice, to protect the best interest of the child.

Once the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child had been adopted and ratified in Spain, the social, scientific and academic reflections and debates underlined the need to reinforce and extend the rights of children in other areas, for example in cases where their rights came into conflict with the rights of adults, particularly their parents; and cases in which the individual rights came up against collective rights within the cultural or religious context in which the children lived.