Majority of Spain wants gay marriage

Seventy per cent of Spaniards are in favour of plans to legalise gay unions, according to a new poll, Reuters reported.

Despite strong opposition from the Catholic Church in the country, three quarters of respondents to the nationwide poll said they thought the law should give homosexual couples exactly the same rights and obligations as heterosexual partners.

Spain, where 95 percent of the population is registered as Catholic, recently elected Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero who has made the gay marriage law a high-profile issue during his first months in office.

Only 11.6 percent of the 2,479 people questioned for the poll said they were very or quite opposed to the law.