Judge denies Cantabria woman, 23, parental financial support due to her 'laziness'

The regional court in Cantabria rejected the 23-year-old's appeal against the verdict by a judge in her home town of Castro Urdiales, stating that the plaintiff had been 'wasting her life'.

Parents in Spain are legally required to provide the basics, including food, for their children until they reach 18, and must continue to do so beyond this age until the adult child is earning enough to feed him- or herself.

But this includes a caveat: if the adult child's financial dependence is caused by his or her own behaviour, parents are no longer obliged by law to feed them.

In the case of the 23-year-old from Cantabria, she left school without passing her ESO - Spain's answer to GCSEs - and, although she repeatedly asked her parents for money to take office technology courses, she either did not bother to sign up for them, failed to attend classes or did not undertake any extra-curricular practice.

As a result, she did not complete or gain any qualifications from her office skills classes.

She had had various sporadic jobs in Castro Urdiales; in the south of the country in Cádiz and Huelva, and even in London, but in all cases left before her contract was over and did not even try to learn English when she was in the UK.

In the local and regional courts, the judges said she had not used the time since she had left school productively to either finish her basic qualifications or obtain further ones, or new skills.

The appeal verdict reads: "It can and must be concluded that the appellant's own behaviour after reaching the age of majority - behaviour legally qualifiable as neglect, laziness and lack of productive use of time and opportunities - that has left said appellant in her current situation."

Photograph: A small town in Cantabria