They make up half the Spanish population but have yet to appear on a single coin. Now MPs are preparing to pass a bill stipulating that 50 per cent of Spain’s euro coins must bear a woman’s image.

“For women, this is absolutely fundamental,” said Elvira Cortajarena, the Socialist MP sponsoring the measure. “We need our work to be recognised and valued.”

In Fuenlabrada, a commuter town on the outskirts of Madrid, authorities are taking aim at other perceived symbols of male domination. The town council has decreed that half of the street signs should show a recognisably female figure. New signs at pedestrian crossings show a stick figure with a skirt and a pony tail, rather than the traditional striding man. “The idea is to change the male signs for female ones as they deteriorate,” said Rosalina Guijarro, the town’s traffic and safety councillor. “That way we will end the sexism that has existed in traffic signs.”

All over Spain, long considered the spiritual home of machismo, debate is raging about gender equality in a way that has not been heard in other European countries since the 1970s.

Efforts to give the country’s coins and street signs a female face have been met with some derision by conservatives as evidence of political correctness gone mad. But those symbolic moves are being accompanied by one of the most ambitious efforts to promote gender equality seen in decades.

The films of Pedro Almodóvar, from What Have I Done to Deserve This? to Volver, have depicted Spain as a country of proud, long-suffering women and feckless, violent men. But if the country’s first woman Deputy Prime Minister has her way, it will soon look more like Scandinavia. “Spanish women have come a long way in a short time,” María Teresa Fernández de la Vega told The Times. “Over the past 30 years we have managed to reach the front line. Now, Spain is leading the way in equal rights.”

When he came to power in March 2004 the Socialist Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, promised to make gender equality one of his Government’s top priorities. An avowed feminist, he appointed women to half of the positions in his Cabinet — more than in any other European government except Sweden — and posed with them in a photo reminiscent of the famous “Blair’s babes” picture. In another photoshoot, the new ministers wore designer outfits and posed for Spanish Vogue, giving the Opposition plenty to scoff about. They have called the Deputy Prime Minister “de la Vogue” ever since.

But the Government has unveiled a succession of initiatives to change machista behaviour from the boardroom to the bedroom. It has made divorce easier, legalised same-sex marriage and altered marriage contracts to specify that men must do half the housework. It is lowering the height requirement so that the armed forces can recruit more women.

It has also worked to place domestic violence at the top of the political agenda, with the Prime Minister calling it Spain’s “greatest national disgrace”. The Government has set up 40 new courts to try abuse cases and increased the number of police dealing with them by 90 per cent, to 1,400 officers. Because of its emphasis on the issue the 46-nation Council of Europe chose Spain to launch its biggest campaign on the issue this week.

MPs are debating the Government’s new Gender Equality Bill, which is one of the most sweeping and ambitious efforts anywhere to promote women into top jobs. If passed the law will stipulate that at least 40 per cent of candidates on party electoral lists must be female. It will also force Spanish companies to appoint women to at least 40 per cent of seats on their board of directors — the second country, after Norway, to attempt such a move. Women occupy less than 5 per cent of board seats at Spain’s 35 largest companies.

The opposition Popular Party has led the charge against the Bill, calling its quotas an unnecessary imposition on the freedom of companies to choose the most qualified people. Businesses give warning that it could mean people assume that even well-qualified women directors are simply there to fill a quota.

“Imposing parity on company boards or in executive positions is not going to work,” said Pilar González de Frutos, vice-president of the Spanish Confederation of Businesses, in a recent opinion piece. “We don’t choose professionals because of their gender today. Why should we do it in the future?” There has, however, been remarkably little opposition to the rapidly changing role of women in a country that, only three decades ago, accorded them fewer rights than some Muslim countries, such as Turkey.

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