Mucho chores for macho men with Spain's new law

Valentin Lopez is lucky he got married in time. The hospital worker says he shares the housework with his wife, but he gropes for examples. 'Well, I clear the dinner table, I wash the dishes and every now and then I make the bed,' he concludes sheepishly.

Were he to marry this summer, López, 45, would need to learn how to iron quickly. Under a reformed civil code, marriage contracts in Spain will include a pledge to share housework, child rearing and care for the elders.

'It's a symbolic gesture, but it sends a message,' said Margarita Uría, the parliamentarian who pushed for the change. 'This isn't about arguing "I ironed two shirts, you ironed one shirt".'

The new clause is expected to win final passage in the Spanish Senate this week - oddly, as part a sweeping reform of the country's divorce law.

Soon couples who opt for a civil wedding will also say 'I do' to an equal partnership in washing socks, picking up the children from school and taking mothers-in-law to the doctor, jobs that usually fall to women.

The average Spanish man spends only 44 minutes a day on housework and 51 minutes on child care, a recent survey by the Labour Ministry's Institute of Women showed. Their wives spend nearly six hours.

Standing outside the Civil Registry, bride Conchi Redonda, 24, counts her blessings. Her bridegroom, Pablo Calvache, 30, often cooks, cleans the house and takes their three-year-old to school whenever he can, even though she does not work outside the home. '

'I hit the lottery,' she said. 'All my friends say how lucky I am.'

Soon men such as Calvache may not be so rare. 'I know many couples in which the men have required a paradigm shift and they've risen to the occasion,' said couples' counsellor Claire Jasinski. Spanish men, she said, often expect to play a small role in child-rearing and are often 'cranky' when they discover they will not come home to 'bathed children, slippers and a Martini.'

But most adapt - even if they end up 'making all the clothes pink' by washing whites with colours.

The new marriage clause is only the latest scheme to coax Spanish men into pushing a vacuum. In 2002, the Madrid district of Barajas published a Manual for Housewives-Househusbands with advice on delicate problems such as how to turn on the washing machine. That same year another district in suburban Madrid organised a survival skills workshop for men, which attracted a dozen elderly and middle-aged divorcés, but no newlyweds.

The government even spent €1.7 million (£1.1m) on a humourous campaign in 2003 to raise awareness of the problem. The slogan: 'Of course you know how to clean. Why don't you do it?'

Machismo isn't the only reason. Some people blame the workforce, in which job-sharing is rare and bosses rarely grant flexible working hours. Others blame an older generation of mothers who failed to teach their sons to boil an egg.

Another obstacle is the fact that many men do not leave home until their late twenties or even thirties because of high youth unemployment. When they finally land a steady job, they shuttle from their mother's kitchen to their girlfriend's.

Then, of course, there is laziness. 'I know someone who is 33 years old and lives on his own, but he still takes his dirty laundry to his mother's house,' said Almundena Zurita, 28.