- Methods and Projects
- Standards and Classifications
Standardised Methodological Report
Vital Statistics: Marriages
- 1Contact
- 1.1Contact organisation
National Statistics Institute of Spain
- 1.5Contact mail address
Avenida de Manoteras 50-52 - 28050 Madrid
- 1.1Contact organisation
- 2Metadata update
- 2.1Metadata last certified
15/11/2024
- 2.2Metadata last posted
22/11/2023
- 2.3Metadata last update
15/11/2024
- 2.1Metadata last certified
- 3Statistical presentation
- 3.1Data description
The marriage statistics covers the marriages celebrated in Spain every year.
Data is mainly obtained from the information recorded in the Civil Registries through an application called INFOREG/DICIREG. This application implemented in most of the Civil Registries collects more than 90% of the marriages registered in Spain each year. In those Civil Registries that are not computerized, the information is collected in a document called the Statistical Marriage Bulletin. The section relating to personal data in this document is completed by the spouses. The civil registry in which the marriage is registered completes the data relating to the registration.
The marriage statistics offers information disaggregated both at the national level and at the level of Autonomous Communities, provinces, capitals and municipalities.
- 3.2Classification system
- Comunidades y Ciudades Autónomas
01 Andalucía
02 Aragón
03 Asturias, Principado de
04 Balears, Illes
05 Canarias
06 Cantabria
07 Castilla y León
08 Castilla - La Mancha
09 Cataluña
10 Comunitat Valenciana
11 Extremadura
12 Galicia
13 Madrid, Comunidad de
14 Murcia, Región de
15 Navarra, Comunidad Foral de
16 País Vasco
17 Rioja, La
18 Ceuta
19 Melilla - Estado civil 1
1 Solteros/Solteras
3 Viudos/Viudas
5 Divorciados/Divorciadas - Forma de celebración
1 Según la religión católica
2 Según otras religiones
3 Exclusivamente civil - Grupos de edad 13
Y-LT15 Menos de 15 años
Y15T19 De 15 a 19 años
Y20T24 De 20 a 24 años
Y25T29 De 25 a 29 años
Y30T34 De 30 a 34 años
Y35T39 De 35 a 39 años
Y40T44 De 40 a 44 años
Y45T49 De 45 a 49 años
Y50T54 De 50 a 54 años
Y55T59 De 55 a 59 años
Y-GE60 60 y más años - Municipios
Relación de municipios y sus códigos acorde al estándar del INE
Ver clasificación - Provincias
02 Albacete
03 Alicante/Alacant
04 Almería
01 Araba/Álava
33 Asturias
05 Ávila
06 Badajoz
07 Balears, Illes
08 Barcelona
48 Bizkaia
09 Burgos
10 Cáceres
11 Cádiz
39 Cantabria
12 Castellón/Castelló
13 Ciudad Real
14 Córdoba
15 Coruña, A
16 Cuenca
20 Gipuzkoa
17 Girona
18 Granada
19 Guadalajara
21 Huelva
22 Huesca
23 Jaén
24 León
25 Lleida
27 Lugo
28 Madrid
29 Málaga
30 Murcia
31 Navarra
32 Ourense
34 Palencia
35 Palmas, Las
36 Pontevedra
26 Rioja, La
37 Salamanca
38 Santa Cruz de Tenerife
40 Segovia
41 Sevilla
42 Soria
43 Tarragona
44 Teruel
45 Toledo
46 Valencia/València
47 Valladolid
49 Zamora
50 Zaragoza
51 Ceuta
52 Melilla - Sexo
1 Hombres
2 Mujeres - Valores especiales
U Desconocido, no sabe, sin datos
X No consta, no asignado, no especificado
P No procede
Z No clasificable, no aplicable
- Comunidades y Ciudades Autónomas
- 3.3Sector coverage
It covers all marriages celebrated in Spain, regardless of whether they are of the resident or non-resident population.
- 3.4Statistical concepts and definitions
- Legal marital status
Legal marital status is defined as that which every individual has in accordance with marriage legislation (or marriage uses) of the country (in other words, the legal situation).
- Marriage
Stable union between two persons, resulting from an agreement between the wishes of both of them, outwardly manifested via the legally established formalities.
- Usual residence
Place where a person normally spends rest periods, not taking into account temporary absences due to leisure trips, holidays, visits to family and friends, business, visiting friends or relatives or religious pilgrimages. Nevertheless, it is important to highlight that only usual residents in a region will be considered:
- Those who, according to the previous definition, would usually have lived therein for a continuous period of at least 12 months.
- Those who, according to the previous definition, would have established their usual residence therein less than 12 months ago, but with the intention of remaining therein for at least one year.
Where the above circumstances cannot be established, "usual residence" shall mean the place of registered residence.
- Legal marital status
- 3.5Statistical unit
This statistic's basic unit is the marriage celebrated
- 3.6Statistical population
The population subject to statistical study is all persons who have entered into marriage in Spain
- 3.7Reference area
The statistic covers the entire national territory.
- 3.8Time coverage
The survey is carried out annually. Results are available from 1900 until 2023.
- 3.9Base period
2005 can also be taken as a start year, as this is the year when same sex marriages were included.
Marriages between persons of different sexes have been comparable since 1975.
- 3.1Data description
- 4Unit of measure
- 4.1Unit of measure
The unit of measurement are the persons who entered into marriage.
- 4.1Unit of measure
- 5Reference period
- 5.1Reference period
Data refer to the calendar year covered by the statistic, regardless of whether data are published by month of celebration of marriage
Data referring to the period: Annual Y: 2022
- 5.1Reference period
- 6Institutional mandate
- 6.1Legal acts and other agreements
The compilation and dissemination of the data are governed by the Statistical Law No. 12/1989 "Public Statistical Function" of May 9, 1989, and Law No. 4/1990 of June 29 on “National Budget of State for the year 1990" amended by Law No. 13/1996 "Fiscal, administrative and social measures" of December 30, 1996, makes compulsory all statistics included in the National Statistics Plan. The National Statistical Plan 2009-2012 was approved by the Royal Decree 1663/2008. It contains the statistics that must be developed in the four year period by the State General Administration's services or any other entity dependent on it. All statistics included in the National Statistics Plan are statistics for state purposes and are obligatory. The National Statistics Plan 2021-2024, approved by Royal Decree 1110/2020, of 15 December, is the Plan currently implemented. This statistical operation has governmental purposes, and it is included in the National Statistics Plan 2021-2024. (Statistics of the State Administration).
Collaboration agreements with the Autonomous Communities for the preparation of the Vital Statistics
- 6.2Data sharing
The exchanges of information needed to elaborate statistics between the INE and the rest of the State statistical offices (Ministerial Departments, independent bodies and administrative bodies depending on the State General Administration), or between these offices and the Autonomic statistical offices, are regulated in the LFEP (Law of the Public Statistic Function). This law also regulates the mechanisms of statistical coordination, and concludes cooperation agreements between the different offices when necessary.
It is carried out collaboratively with the Autonomous Communities
- 6.1Legal acts and other agreements
- 7Confidentiality
- 7.1Confidentiality - policy
The Statistical Law No. 12/1989 specifies that the INE cannot publish, or make otherwise available, individual data or statistics that would enable the identification of data for any individual person or entity. Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics stipulates the need to establish common principles and guidelines ensuring the confidentiality of data used for the production of European statistics and the access to those confidential data with due account for technical developments and the requirements of users in a democratic society
- 7.2Confidentiality - data treatment
INE provides information on the protection of confidentiality at all stages of the statistical process: INE questionnaires for the operations in the national statistical plan include a legal clause protecting data under statistical confidentiality. Notices prior to data collection announcing a statistical operation notify respondents that data are subject to statistical confidentiality at all stages. For data processing, INE employees have available the INE data protection handbook, which specifies the steps that should be taken at each stage of processing to ensure reporting units' individual data are protected. The microdata files provided to users are anonymised.
.
- 7.1Confidentiality - policy
- 8Release policy
- 8.1Release calendar
The advance release calendar that shows the precise release dates for the coming year is disseminated in the last quarter of each year.
- 8.2Release calendar access
The calendar is disseminated on the INEs Internet website (Publications Calendar)
- 8.3User access
The data are released simultaneously according to the advance release calendar to all interested parties by issuing the press release. At the same time, the data are posted on the INE's Internet website (www.ine.es/en) almost immediately after the press release is issued. Also some predefined tailor-made requests are sent to registered users. Some users could receive partial information under embargo as it is publicly described in the European Statistics Code of Practice
- 8.1Release calendar
- 9Frequency of dissemination
- 9.1Frequency of dissemination
Definitive data are disseminated on an annual basis.
Definitive data for year t is disseminated in December of year t + 1.
- 9.1Frequency of dissemination
- 10Accessibility and clarity
- 10.1News release
The results of the statistical operations are normally disseminated by using press releases that can be accessed via both the corresponding menu and the Press Releases Section in the web
- 10.2Publications
The results of this statistic are released through the INE webpage and some results are covered in publications such as the Anuario Estadistico (Statistical Yearbook), Cifras INE (INE Figures), España en Cifras (Spain in Figures), etc.
- 10.3On-line database
INEbase is the system the INE uses to store statistical information on the Internet. It contains all the information the INE produces in electronic formats. The primary organisation of the information follows the theme-based classification of the Inventory of Statistical Operations of the State General Administration . The basic unit of INEbase is the statistical operation, defined as the set of activities that lead to obtaining statistical results on a determined sector or subject based on the individually collected data. Also included in the scope of this definition are synthesis preparation.
All information relating to this statistic (results, methodology, questionnaires, etc.) can be found at:
All the information relating to Basic Demographic Indicators in general can be found at:
The definitive data on marriage rate indicators offer information at the national level and at the level of the Autonomous Communities and provinces of residence with a greater disaggregation of variables.
- 10.4Micro-data access
A lot of statistical operations disseminate public domain anonymized files, available free of charge for downloading in the INE website Microdata Section
Microdata files on this statistic can be accessed and downloaded. These files are anonymised to maintain statistical secrecy.
No information is provided on the following variables:
- Names, surnames, identity documents, residence of spouses
- Registration data of the marriage in the civil registry
- Day variable on all dates
- Codes of municipalities with under 10,000 inhabitants. The size of the municipality is provided.
- Codes of countries with a lower frequency than that established.
- The information can be found at:
- 10.5Other
Interested users may request specific use of information through the INE Information Area, carried out while preserving the confidentiality of data and by signing the corresponding agreement or document.
See:
- 10.6Documentation on methodology
A detailed description can be found at:
https://www.ine.es/en/metodologia/t20/metodologia_idb_en.pdf
- 10.7Quality documentation
Sections 10.6 to 17 of this document are considered the user-oriented quality report for this operation.
- 10.1News release
- 11Quality management
- 11.1Quality assurance
Quality assurance framework for the INE statistics is based on the ESSCoP, the European Statistics Code of Practice made by EUROSTAT. The ESSCoP is made up of 16 principles, gathered in three areas: Institutional Environment, Processes and Products. Each principle is associated with some indicators which make possible to measure it. In order to evaluate quality, EUROSTAT provides different tools: the indicators mentioned above, Self-assessment based on the DESAP model, peer review, user satisfaction surveys and other proceedings for evaluation.
On the 1 January 2008, a series of reforms for the collection of information on the Marriage Statistics came into force. There are various changes effected, both in forms and in the information flow.
The objectives were the following:
1.- Improve the quality of information in general, including new variables in accordance with the Eurostat recommendations.
2.- Adapt to new information and communication technologies for the collection of information. For this, optical character recognition (OCR) was introduced to record information and a new Statistical Marriage Bulletin was designed for the same purpose.
With the aim of evaluating the quality of information contained in the Statistical Marriage Bulletin, exhaustive checks were carried out in all stages of the statistical process, from the recording of information to its publication.
There is particular emphasis on ensuring that the values of the variables are valid, that there are no inconsistencies between the information received on one marriage and that data on all marriages celebrated in the reference period are received.
Furthermore, the INE's information is compared with that provided by the Ministry of Justice on registrations made in the computerised civil registries. This comparison allows us to correct any errors detected.
- 11.2Quality assessment
In order to evaluate the quality of the information exhaustive controls are carried out in all phases of the statistics process from the recording of the information to its publication. Particular emphasis is placed on checking that the values of the variables are valid and there are no inconsistencies between the information is received in a marriage.
- 11.1Quality assurance
- 12Relevance
- 12.1User needs
The information on marriages is used by other INE units, such as:
Demographic Indicators, for the preparation of marriage rate tables
National agenciesBased on the Resolution of 7 February 2005, of the Under-Secretariat, which provides for the publication of the management delegation of the Secretary of State for Justice to the National Statistics Institute concerning the transmission of computerised data relating to the registration of births, marriages and deaths made in the Civil Registers, the Secretary of State for Justice and the National Statistics Institute have signed, dated 13 October 2004, an agreement which entrusts the latter, on a transitional basis until the end of the
process of computerisation of all Civil Registers, the transmission of computerised data relating to the registration of births, marriages and deaths made in the Civil Registers. The National Statistics Institute, at the request of the Directorate General for Registers and Notaries, may facilitate the
mass transmission of data of public utility to public agencies that hav an interest in them.International agencies
Eurostat and United Nations. The information agreed in the meetings of working groups for demographic statistics are sent
Requests from universities, businesses and individuals
- 12.2User satisfaction
The INE has carried out general user satisfaction surveys in 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2019 and it plans to continue doing so every three years. The purpose of these surveys is to find out what users think about the quality of the information of the INE statistics and the extent to which their needs of information are covered. In addition, additional surveys are carried out in order to acknowledge better other fields such as dissemination of the information, quality of some publications...
On the INE website, in its section Methods and Projects / Quality and Code of Practice / INE quality management / User surveys are available surveys conducted to date.(Click next link)
In the user satisfaction surveys carried out to date, the Demography and Population sector that includes this statistical operation is assessed, which could provide indications regarding users' opinion on the operation.
- 12.3Completeness
Information required by users is made available to them, whilst respecting the confidentiality of the information.
The information covered allows for received requests to be dealt with.
100% of the results requested by the National Statistics Plan are provided
- 12.1User needs
- 13Accuracy and reliability
- 13.1Overall accuracy
The procedure for the collection, coverage control, filtration and imputation of non-response, allows for a high degree of reliability of the statistics.
- 13.2Sampling error
Not applicable as the data is obtained in a comprehensive manner from an administrative source (entries in the civil register)
- 13.3Non-sampling error
Delays in sending the information by some civil registers and lack of information in some variables of the bulletin. This means that this statistic has a non-response rate of approximately 0.9%
An attempt is made to reduce the non-response rate by obtaining information from the Ministry of Justice file.
- 13.1Overall accuracy
- 14Timeliness and punctuality
- 14.1Timeliness
Definitive data are published at the end of the year following the reference year of the information, that is to say, within 12 months.
TP1=12 meses
- 14.2Punctuality
Data dissemination is carried out according to the structural statistics availability calendar prepared and published by the INE every year.
TP3=0
- 14.1Timeliness
- 15Coherence and Comparability
- 15.1Comparability - geographical
The processing of this statistic in all stages is the same throughout the territory. In this way, results are completely comparable for any geographical disaggregation. Furthermore, they are comparable with the rest of the countries of the European Union as the Eurostat recommendations established for all countries and agreed upon at the meetings of the working group of Demographic Statistics are followed.
- 15.2Comparability - over time
The statistical concept of marriage has undergone the smallest change within the VS, as the same concept of marriage has been maintained, that is to say, marriages registered in the civil registry.
However, an important modification was made by Law 13/2005 of 1 July (Official State Gazette of 2 July 2005), which amends the Civil Code regarding the right to marriage. In the aforementioned law, marriages are permitted between persons of the same or different sexes, with complete and equal rights and responsibilities, regardless of the composition of said marriages.This change means that, since 2005, the Marriage Statistics include both marriages celebrated between persons of the opposite sex and marriages celebrated between persons of the same sex that were not included before the aforementioned year.
The heterosexual marriages series are available from 1900 to 2022. The series covers 124 years.
The same sex marriages series are available from 2005 to 2022. The series covers 19 years.
CC2(homo)=19
CC2(hetero)= 124
- 15.3Coherence - cross domain
The marriage figures are coherent with those obtained by the Ministry of Justice in the civil registries.
- 15.4Coherence - internal
Coherence between variables are compared at all stages of the statistical process.
- 15.1Comparability - geographical
- 16Cost and burden
- 16.1Cost and burden
As this statistic is based on an administrative register, there is no burden on respondents.
The estimated budgetary appropriation to finance the Vital Statistics (comprised of Death Statistics, Birth statistics and Marriage Statistics), as provided for in the 2024 Annual Programme, is 4,638.12 thousand Euros.
- 16.1Cost and burden
- 17Data revision
- 17.1Data revision - policy
The INE of Spain has a policy which regulates the basic aspects of statistical data revision, seeking to ensure process transparency and product quality. This policy is laid out in the document approved by the INE board of directors on 13 March of 2015, which is available on the INE website, in the section "Methods and projects/Quality and Code of Practice/INE’s Quality management/INE’s Revision policy" (link).
This general policy sets the criteria that the different type of revisions should follow: routine revision- it is the case of statistics whose production process includes regular revisions-; more extensive revision- when methodological or basic reference source changes take place-; and exceptional revision- for instance, when an error appears in a published statistic-.
The definitive data are not reviewed. They are only reviewed if there is an error in the publication.
- 17.2Data revision - practice
-
- 17.1Data revision - policy
- 18Statistical processing
- 18.1Source data
The statistic's data are obtained from information completed by spouses and the Civil Registry at the time of celebrating the marriage.
Data is mainly obtained from the information recorded in the Civil Registries through an application called INFOREG/DICIREG. This application implemented in most of the Civil Registries collects more than 90% of the marriages registered in Spain each year. In those Civil Registries that are not computerized, the information is collected in a document called the Statistical Marriage Bulletin.
With the main objective of improving the quality of information in some classification variables, highly reliable administrative information (referring to January 1 of each year) has been incorporated. Using many available data sources, each spouse is assigned the province and municipality of residence, the situation in relation to work activity, and the level of education for those over 25. For this, population precensus files has been used.
- 18.2Frequency of data collection
Data are collected monthly.
- 18.3Data collection
In computerized civil registries, the data related to the registration are recorded in an application called INFOREG/DICIREG and transmitted to the INE on a monthly basis.
Civil Registries that are not computerized, the information is collected through the Marriage Statistical Bulletin. Once it has been completed by the spouses, it is entered in the civil registry of the municipality where the marriage was celebrated for registration. The civil registry sends its registered bulletins in each month to INE monthly. At INE, the civil registry documentation is received, recorded through optical character recognition and the fields are validated. This information is directly sent to the INE database.
- 18.4Data validation
During the process of editing and debugging the information, completeness and coherence of the contents of the different registers is studied.
In the particular case of recording by optical character recognition, the application includes the detection of certain errors in the bulletin information, as well as coverage control and detection of duplicate information. These errors must be corrected in the first stage for the information to be included in the marriage database. The objective is to obtain quality levels that make the later filtering and imputation processes of the processing stages faster and less expensive.
- 18.5Data compilation
The recorded data is filtered at the national level in order to detect inconsistencies, duplicates, lack of information, etc. Following this process an automatic imputation phase is applied for variables with missing or inconsistent information. Once this stage is finished, the statistic's microdata files are obtained, from which publication tables of both marriages and the corresponding marriage rate indicators can be extracted. Furthermore, anonymised microdata files are obtained that are made available to users on the webpage
- 18.6Adjustment
As this statistic's data come from an administrative register, no adjustments are made
- 18.1Source data
- 19Comment
- 19.1Comment
- 19.1Comment