Women in the Spanish democratic transition period (1975–1982) were able to legally organise as feminist groups. The adultery law was repealed in 1978. Abortion was not legalized during the transition, but was in some circumstances shortly afterwards in 1985.
1970s in transition
During Spanish elections in the transition period, women favored centrist political parties and disavowed more the extremist elements like ETA, Herri Batasuna (HB), Catalan nationalists ERC, and Galician radicals.
In the transition period, HOAC, JEC, Comisiones Obreras and UGT were largely focused on the creation of a new Spanish democracy. While female only labor associations had existed underground in the Francoist period, these organizations and the specific needs of women they espoused were largely ignored by HOAC, JEC, Comisiones Obreras and UGT.
Women's rights
Abortion
Because abortion was illegal in Spain, during the 1970s, Spanish women who could afford it went to London to get abortions. Between 1974 and 1988, 195,993 Spanish women traveled to England and Wales to get an abortion. Women also went to the Netherlands in this period to have abortions. France was not an option, as at the time it required women who had abortions to be French residents and have resided in the country for at least three months. Women then needed to wait a week to reflect before they could get an abortion. An unknown number of women went to North Africa and Portugal for abortions. During the mid-1970s, the Catholic Church preached that no physical barrier should be present during sex, and that even post-coital washes were problematic as they interfered with the primary goal of sex being conception. The Catholic Church taught the only acceptable reproductive control methods were abstinence and the rhythm method. The Church tried to interfere in any efforts to change this. In the 1970s and 1980s, feminists were the only major group demanding the government address women's needs to have access to abortion services. They played a critical role in changing public perception around abortion.
Adultery
In the immediate post-Franco era, feminists in Spain were united in their goal to eliminate the law that made adultery a criminal offense. Their efforts were joined by many anonymous women and some men. They found support in their goals from progressive political parties.
Childcare
Childcare was an aspect of women's rights taken up during the democratic transition period. Starting in 1975, state policy switched to offering more opportunities for children to be enrolled in free state-run educational preschool programs. These classes were for children aged three to five, the three years before the state mandated age to start attending school of six years old. The childcare programs that the government focused on had two distinct features. One was that programs for 4 and 5-year-olds be educational. Many of these programs were run through the Ministry of Education and Culture. There were few comparable programs for children three and under. Second was that private childcare facilities had to be approved and regulated by the government. This, unlike other western countries, included attempts to regulate private daycare run by people from their homes. None of these programs were focused on the needs of working parents. This was because of a widespread belief that mothers made the best caregivers of their children.
Despite increased feminist interests in childcare as an component of women's rights in the democratic period, feminists were not consistent in their demands and were unable to mobilize around the issue. Feminist groups, feminists inside state institutions and women's sections of Spanish unions differed from their European peers in that they infrequently drove needs for a wide range of childcare services to be offered by the state and have not acted as primary supporters of the needs of mothers. When they were working as actors in this area, it was generally on behalf of children and focused on the education needs of children under the age of six. Major complaints have involved the lack of government run educational opportunities for children in this age group.