MELBOURNE — On June 25, in a historic vote, the Spanish parliament's Commission for the Environment, Agriculture and Fisheries declared its support for The Great Ape Project, a proposal to grant rights to life, liberty and protection from torture to our closest nonhuman relatives: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans.

Other countries, such as New Zealand and Britain, have taken steps to protect great apes from harmful experimentation, but no national parliament has declared that any animal could be a person with rights.

The resolution, which the full parliament is expected to adopt, directs the Spanish government to promote a similar European Union-wide declaration. It also calls on the government to adopt, within a year, legislation to prohibit potentially harmful experiments on great apes that are not in their interests.