MADRID (Reuters) - The Miss Spain beauty contest has changed its rules to allow mothers to compete after its decision to dethrone a 22-year-old beauty queen when it emerged she had a child met with national outrage in February.

Angela Bustillo, who has a toddler son, won the title of Miss Cantabria, a region on Spain's northern coast, in January but organizers disqualified her citing rules that contestants cannot have children.

The decision sparked widespread outrage in the Spanish press and expressions of support for the dethroned queen from feminist organizations to the head of the Cantabrian local government.

"I knew what it said in the contest conditions, but it seemed so absurd. I thought it must be something left over from the 1970s that they had forgotten to bring up to date," Bustillo, a former supermarket worker, said at the time.

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