HomeThemesMarriagesPress releases There were 2,287 marriages...

Press Release 25/11/2016

MARRIAGE STATISTICS II/2016

There were 2,287 marriages registered in the second quarter of 2016 in the Basque Country, 3.2% down on the previous year

The number of civil marriages continued to grow

In the second quarter of 2016 the figure for marriages in the Basque Country stood at 2,287, which was a drop of 3.2% compared to the same quarter of the previous year, according to Eustat data. Of the total number of marriages, 65 were between people of the same sex – 27 men and 38 women – and the remaining 2,222 were heterosexual marriages.

As is common in the second quarter the number of unions rose considerably, above all in the months of May and June, as opposed to what happens in the winter months, characterised by the low number of weddings.

During the spring months of 2016, the percentage of civil weddings was 81.5%, 1.5 points higher than in the same quarter of 2015 but lower than that observed in the first quarter of 2016, when it stood at 91.4%. This percentage refers only to heterosexual marriages, to which a further 2.8 points should be added for marriages between people of the same sex, all of which were civil.

Of the 2,287 marriages in the second quarter of 2016, 2,170 men and 2,171 women resident in the Basque Country married. For 1,868 spouses (86.1%) this was their first marriage, whilst 13 widowers and 289 divorcees remarried. The percentage of first weddings for women was similar to that for men: the number of single women who married stood at 1,864 (85.9%), 10 widows and 297 divorcees.

The age of those getting married continued to rise

With respect to the distribution according to the age of the couple, 91.3% of husbands and 83.1% of wives were older than 30. These proportions were greater than those for the same period of 2015 (89.9% and 80.9%, respectively), which maintains, for another quarter, the rising trend in the age of the population on getting married.

In terms of provinces, Álava, with 306 weddings, saw a decrease of 10.3%; Bizkaia, with 1,091 weddings, was down by 3.2%, and Gipuzkoa dropped by 1.5%, with 707 weddings taking place. On the other hand, 118 couples fixed their residency outside the Basque Country.

In the months of April, May and June 2016, 6.2% of recently married men and 10.2% of recently married women were foreign nationals. With regards to the same quarter of the previous year, the percentage of men increased by 0.5 points and women 1.7 percentage points.