Pedro Sánchez needed to stop the bleeding that had started within the PSOE at the expense of the trans law and that is why Moncloa has stepped on the accelerator to mark what will be the final position of the party in the debate in Congress. The Socialists are trying to settle the debate that has been going on for months in their midst by closing the door to introducing changes in one of the most controversial issues of the law promoted by the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero: the free gender self-determination of people trans. Once the path has been defined in the PSOE, the path of the trans law is paved in Parliament.
The socialist leadership began to work last week on the modifications it wants to introduce in the norm and finished plucking the daisy between Wednesday and Thursday morning. The Ministry of Equality had complained that the Socialists requested an extension in the term of presentation of amendments to the norm, despite the fact that it is usual in parliamentary procedures. “We must move forward now and close this issue,” they point out in the direction of the PSOE.
“We have put on a show,” acknowledge government sources about the war that the PSOE has gone through with the trans law and that has had as its last episode the loss of militancy of Carla Antonelli, the first transsexual parliamentarian, due to the position held by her party. Previously, prominent socialist leaders, including former vice president Carmen Calvo, have charged against the regulations and the matter has become so entrenched that it has reached the party’s Ethics and Guarantees Commission, which will meet soon to resolve the cross complaints that have arrived with the trans law as a background.
Sánchez, through the ministers Félix Bolaños and María Jesús Montero, as well as the Secretary for Equality, Andrea Fernández, has tried to contain the pressure by defining a final position, which will be the one defended by the Socialist Group in the parliamentary process, despite that it does not convince an important sector of the party to keep gender self-determination intact. Tempers will continue to heat up in the match. “On a political level, we have to work for an agreement,” he says in a conversation with elDiario.es the Secretary for Equality, Andrea Fernández.
“You could not turn around a law that has come out of the Council of Ministers. Gender self-determination was a red line for Montero and, therefore, for the Government,” says one of the people who have been defeated in this departure. The intention of a sector of the PSOE was to introduce modifications in the registry change of sex incorporating the need for witnesses, as occurs with civil marriages, or psychological support. However, that proposal has not even been in writing in the papers that have been exchanged during the internal negotiations. The decision has been to maintain the norm in the terms in which the Council of Ministers approved it in the first round, that is, those that Calvo herself agreed with Montero.
What they give importance to in the socialist leadership is the changes that they will propose via amendments to end the concept of “intra-gender violence” that appears in the law that has reached Congress. In the ranks of the PSOE, “equation” to sexist violence was disturbing. “We know that the law will end up being appealed by the PP and its far-right partners in the Constitutional Court. The legislature can improve the law and make it more robust in the face of these attacks by those who are true enemies of the rights of the groups,” sources from the PSOE.
In United We Can they do hope that the step taken by the PSOE implies the “immediate” unblocking of the parliamentary procedure and that, therefore, next week the term of amendments will not be extended again, a mechanism that they had described as an “excuse ” to block the law. The confederal parliamentary group admits that it is willing to negotiate amendments to the text approved in the Council of Ministers as long as they serve “to improve” the law and not “to cut the rights of trans people.”
In principle, all parties trust that the changes that the PSOE finally introduces will not be an impediment to reaching an agreement that allows the law to be in force before the end of the year, the date promised by the Ministry of Equality. Although in Irene Montero’s department, for the moment, they prefer to be cautious until they know the wording of the socialist amendments. However, United We Can consider the step taken by the socialists to be good news, since they believe that it represents an express renunciation of altering the mollar content of the new norm. “Without gender self-determination there was no trans law,” they say. And they believe that they have won a political battle that they have waged within the Government since the beginning of the legislature against the positions led, among other socialist leaders, by former Vice President Carmen Calvo.
Sources from Irene Montero’s team stress that “trans and LGTBI people cannot wait any longer”, and that is why “as many times as their rights are questioned, so many times we will fight that battle until we win it, because it is a question of human rights ”. In the Ministry of Equality they do not understand the reason why the PSOE “has decided to reopen the debate on trans rights, exposing the president himself, after having closed the government agreement for the law in 2021 after a very tough negotiation.” These same sources insist that “next Tuesday the term for amendments should close and the presentation of the law should begin.”
In the socialist ranks they take it for granted that this will mean the unblocking of the law. Some sources point out that the amendment process can be extended to agree first with the rest of the partners, including ERC, EH Bildu or the PNV. Other sources, however, advocate polishing the texts of the amendments these days and giving free rein to the processing of the rule in Congress to turn the page as soon as possible.
