The erotic and the legal do not interact in the same way throughout Spain. Before screening a film of the road movie genre, with which you could cross the whole of Spain, you have to make a first stop in the realm of the senses and emotions. This stop is the first flying goal. And it will always be the most important because it makes us human. It is not a stopover of mere courtesy. Each person must be able to calibrate all his or her senses on his or her own. Also, part of this stage is decision making. Life is about choices. Nothing to do with the old rhombuses that TVE used to put on your television screen.
Well, genuine sensuality is by nature inexplicable. Indeed, you can feel and sense the love of your life despite distance. And when that distance ceases and it is the turn of the sense of touch, the close moments are often more of a wish than a reality. Sometimes, however, optimism becomes tangible, i.e. something you can touch. Even in great love the sense of hearing is able to make words tangible. The tangible, i.e. what you can touch, would in principle only be the province of the sense of touch. But in a great love the sense of touch and the sense of hearing merge. Words cease to be mere signifiers and become genuine meanings. Incipient chords become a melody.
Once the first goal has been reached, the next milestones fade away as they really matter little from an emotional point of view. No one knows what will happen. It is really about sharing that moment of uncertainty and holding on to the good things that are to come. And this is where the erotic and the legal begin to interact, overlap or mutate. Even though we might think of it as a purely factual situation, there will always be legal connotations. Proof of this can be found in the regulations governing unmarried couples.
In Spain, on the legal side, different civil laws coexist. We have common civil law, represented by the Civil Code and general legislation. At the same time, there is also foral legislation, which is developed by some autonomous communities with competence in civil matters. Bearing this in mind, getting married in the Canary Islands is not the same as getting married in Catalonia, from a legal point of view. In the Canary Islands, as in Madrid, ordinary civil law applies and the marriage will be governed by the community of property regime, provided that another regime has not been chosen, such as the separation of property. Most of the people who marry in common territory are under the umbrella of the sociedad de gananciales. This means that assets acquired after the marriage are liable to cover the liabilities of either spouse for damages caused to third parties. In contrast, in the separation of property regime the spouses are not exposed in this way. In other words, the liabilities in the separation of property regime are not projected towards the other spouse. Each spouse is responsible for his or her actions. In order to achieve this liberating catharsis, the separation of property regime has to be registered in the civil registry.
At the frontier where the erotic and the juridical interact, we could bring up Aristotle, who told us that virtue is found at the centre. But I don't think it is a static centre, but a dynamic and restless one. Or at least that centre should be like a compass with a wide circumference. In short, when the erotic interacts with the juridical, the centre is not equidistant but rather shifts to the left at the level of the heart. In the Canaries, although it may seem obvious to say so, you will never see a seaport in the centre but to the north-east where the trade winds blow. The important things are never exactly in the centre.
