Resurrección Galera won her case in Spain's highest court, which ruled that she had been unfairly dismissed by the Catholic church

Spain's Roman Catholic church has lost control over the personal lives of teachers of religious education in state schools after the country's highest court ruled that they cannot be sacked for disobeying Vatican rules on marriage.

In a historic decision, the constitutional court ruled that Resurrección Galera could not be fired for marrying a divorcee.

The decision prevents the church, which hires and fires religion teachers, from dismissing teachers who do not follow Catholic precepts in their relationships.

The ruling that Galera's marriage bore "no relation to the plaintiff's work as a teacher" overturned the decisions of lower courts, which backed the church.

"The truly important thing is that these men cannot get away with this and treat people as if they were in the age of the inquisition," Galera, a practising Catholic, told El País newspaper in reference to the country's bishops.

Hundreds of teachers of religion have reportedly been fired for similar reasons over the past decade. Some have won court cases forcing either the Spanish state or the church itself to pay compensation.

The constitutional court's decision establishes a precedent for the lower courts in similar cases.

"We have been informed that you are living with a married man. That is an unsustainable situation," officials from the diocese of Almería told Galera when she was sacked in 2001 after seven years teaching at a state school in Los Llanos de la Cañada, south-east Spain.

In fact, she had married a divorced Catholic who was waiting for an annulment of his previous marriage.

For the past decade she has had to find other work, and set up a guest house with her German husband. A lower court must now rule on whether she should be reinstated and receive compensation.

Spain's bishops controlled the hiring of religion teachers, whose classes are optional, after a deal signed with the Vatican in 1979. About 70% of Spanish families opt for their children to study what the church defines as "religion and catholic morals", though numbers are declining.

"The least one can ask of a teacher of the Roman Catholic religion is that she should believe in what she teaches," the partly church-owned COPE radio station said in an editorial.