The Minister for Equality, Irene Montero, has taken to the rostrum this Thursday to defend the law of ‘only yes is yes’ and the reform that they had agreed with Esquerra Republicana and EH Bildu that will not go ahead before the decision of the PSOE to agree on the modification of the rule with the Popular Party. Montero has reproached her government partner for not having been able to sit down and negotiate a unitary proposal within the coalition after a right-wing offensive not only against the law but also against the Executive and specifically against the president, Pedro Sanchez.
“The offensive against the law has been an offensive against the Government, also against its president. We were always aware of this and that led us to work on a united response as a Government, it made us always seek agreement as a Government, give in beyond our possibilities, proposal after proposal, to give a united response from the Government and the feminist majority ”, Montero said from the rostrum of the Lower House, where the reform proposed by the Socialists is voted on, which will come out thanks to the support of the Popular Party and the rejection of Unidas Podemos, ERC, EH Bildu, and also Más País and Compromís .
The minister has criticized her government partner for relying on the right to bring out a reform that in her opinion goes backwards in feminist rights and precisely with a party that precisely “has voted against all the advances.” “Yesterday the socialist spokesman, Patxi López, said that the PP has voted against all the advances, perhaps if they vote in favor today it is because it is not an advance, it is a setback, perhaps they should have agreed on a unitary reform,” they said. has claimed.
She then thanked the “feminist majority”, “ERC and EH Bildu” for their work, a “shared work” from the autonomy of each formation to “preserve the feminist advances” of this legislature and also “the feminist movement for supporting a fight” that, he has predicted, “will have to continue to maintain to” recover “the consent in the center of the Penal Code.
Montero has rejected the arguments of the Socialists, who in December asked them to negotiate an agreed exit, but since then they have not opened up to the proposals that Equality has been launching. “They say that this is to tackle the problem, but they know that no reform is going to avoid judicial resolutions to reduce sentences,” recalled the leader of Podemos, who has also reproached the PSOE for not accepting the proposed amendments that were transferred to them in the parliamentary process despite the fact that it included a sharp increase in penalties by placing violence or intimidation as aggravating factors, and he also recalled that the prosecutor of the Chamber for Gender Violence has indicated that the Penal Code after the law of ‘only sí es sí’ is “harder than the previous one”.
The only proposal that the PSOE has made, he said, is to “return to the previous Criminal Code”, which established that “one wound is enough”, as he recalled that the Minister of Justice, Pilar Llop, said in an interview. “A system that bases credibility on injuries, which allows former soccer player Daniel Alves [que atraviesa un juicio por agresión sexual] ”to say that there was consent because there are no marks“.
“This is a serious setback in women’s rights, we are the first country that is going to take a step back and just two months from the European Presidency. Right at this moment, Spain had to be at the forefront and comply with the Istanbul agreement ”, she said to insist that this Thursday a “feminist reform” should come out of the Chamber. “We all shared that an answer to the victims had to be given to the decisions to reduce sentences, but a reform to move forward with a clear message that feminist rights are not negotiated with the PP. The rights that the right and the extreme right place at the center of their attacks have preferred to agree with the PP”, lamented the head of Equality.
“Today we are in the minority, but we are going to continue working. It is the best thing that we feminists know how to do when we win rights and also when we go backwards, also when we are left in the minority: keep going”, closed the minister, who has melted at the end in a hug with the general secretary of her party and colleague in the Government, Ione Belarra.
