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The Justice Commission of Congress has staged the enormous gap that the law on sexual crimes has opened in the coalition government. The paper to reform the ‘only yes is yes’ law, which includes an aggravated subtype for when consent is obtained using physical force or intimidation, has gone ahead with the votes of PSOE, PP, Ciudadanos, PNV and Junts. United Podemos, ERC and Bildu have voted against, whose spokespersons have charged against the Socialists for relying on the party of Alberto Núñez Feijóo to carry out their reform. Vox did not participate in the vote. With this correlation of forces, the text will foreseeably achieve the endorsement of the plenary session on Thursday and from there it will go to the Senate for final approval.
What separates PSOE and Unidas Podemos to modify the law of ‘only yes is yes’
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In this way, the Socialists will comply with the mandate of the president, Pedro Sánchez, who asked at the end of last year to find a way out of the “problem” the accumulation of reductions in sentences and releases of sexual offenders after the entry into force of this norm . At least 978 sentences have been reduced and 104 criminals have been released, according to the latest data released by the Judiciary. The ministries of Justice, led by Pilar Llop (PSOE), and Equality, led by Irene Montero (Podemos), negotiated for weeks but there was no agreement. And the Socialists ended up unilaterally presenting a text that, except for some technical detail agreed upon in recent days with the PP, will be the one that is finally approved except for a last-minute surprise.
Precisely the agreement with the party of Núñez Feijóo to carry out the counter-reform has focused the criticism of the minority partner and the traditional allies of the coalition during the session this Tuesday. The deputy of United We Can Martina Velarde has accused the Socialists of “leading a setback” in women’s rights and of “returning to the penal model of the wound at the hands of the PP”. The PSOE initiative maintains the unification of the crimes of abuse and aggression, but reintroduces the evaluation of violence and intimidation so that the existence of these circumstances determines a greater punishment. It does so by including aggravated figures in all criminal types when consent is obtained using those elements.
Unidas Podemos presented an alternative proposal that places violence as one more aggravating circumstance (such as group action or kinship), since its leaders believe that placing these elements at the core of the crime means once again focusing the discussion on the existence of consent and return, consequently, to the “judicial scheme” that was intended to be overcome with this legal change. A similar scheme follows the proposal presented jointly by ERC and EH Bildu
“There is still time for the PSOE to reverse the process that it wants to culminate together with the PP,” said Isabel Pozueta, the spokesperson for EH Bildu on the commission, who has considered it “inexplicable” that the Socialists side with the PP when who constantly remind him, as he has said, “that they have not supported any measure to support the citizenry” in this legislature.
EH Bildu has defended its role as mediator between the positions of the Ministries of Justice and Equality, with the search for amendments “for the sake of the meeting”. To do this, Pozueta recalled, they have presented amendments that even generate contradictions, since they harden the Penal Code, in line with a punitivism that they do not defend. “There is still time to backtrack on some harmful approaches and appear on Thursday as a compact block,” he insisted on the PSOE.
“It is shameful that they apply a roller formed by the PSOE and the PP to us”, said, for her part, the deputy of ERC Pilar Valluguera, who has accused the Socialists of “not putting up with” the “pull of the media right and of the revision of sentences that occurs in any modification of the criminal law”. “It is not a way to legislate or run a State”, she has asserted.
The position of the Socialists has been defended by the deputy Laura Berja, who has insisted that her reform proposal “shields the paradigm shift” that brought this new regulation of sexual crimes while correcting what she has described as “effects not wanted”. “When an attacker is released from prison or a sentence is lowered, there is a victim who is devastated and for the PSOE, the victims come first. The humiliating thing is to do nothing ”, she has asserted.
