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In 1986, two women in Madrid were taken away by police for kissing each other in the street and were held at the police station for two days.

The legal basis for detaining them was Article 431 of the Criminal Code, commonly known as the Public Scandal Law.

This charge bore the mark of Franco's dictatorship, which lasted from 1939 to 1975.

During those decades, public affection was subject to regulation, and couples kissing in the street could be fined.

Franco died in 1975, and Madrid soon saw a counterculture movement called La Movida Madrileña.

Freedom and self-expression became the keywords of those years, and gestures like kissing increasingly appeared in public spaces.

LGBT rights groups had been protesting for years, and in 1987 several groups organized a mass kiss-in at Madrid's Puerta del Sol.

That mass kiss-in was aimed precisely at the arrests of the previous year.

Until around the 1990s, every Pride parade in Madrid ended with a kiss in Puerta del Sol.

In 1988, the Public Scandal Law was officially abolished.

From two days in a police station to a mass kiss-in in a square to the article disappearing from the Criminal Code, only a few years passed.

In 2024, 65.3 percent of Spain's population lived in apartments, the highest proportion among EU member states.

Private space in apartments is already limited, and at the same time high housing prices make it hard for young people to move out of their parents' homes.

Amparo Lasén, a sociology professor at Complutense University of Madrid, says there's no private space to spare at home.

So couples move their dates to the street and find a bench to sit on.

She also says that if no one gives them a strange look, or the people involved simply don't care, this kind of public expression becomes much easier.

Isabel Nieto Tous, 28, returned from abroad three years ago and moved back in with her parents.

She says that in Spain, kissing in the street is generally widely accepted.

Lasén also points out that not everyone is equally comfortable displaying their intimate relationships, and same-sex couples tend to receive more stares.

Paula Furió, a former wedding photographer in Valencia, says kissing is just the tip of the iceberg.

Today, kissing can be seen everywhere on Spain's streets, in parks and in squares.

For today's Spaniards, a kiss in the street requires neither explanation nor permission.