The Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, was again involved in a parliamentary riot this Wednesday, this time triggered by her words, accusing the popular parliamentary group of promoting "rape culture." The angry protests of the PP deafened the plenary session for several minutes, while the president of the chamber, Meritxell Batet, demanded silence without success.
After the minister's response, which was responding to a question from the PP – a reproach, actually – about the application of the law of only yes is yes, concluded, visibly annoyed, Batet recalled that the regulation prevents interrupting the shift of word in the questions of the control session, and asked the minister to withdraw the expression that she had used against the popular parliamentary group, while warning Irene Montero and the rest of the chamber against "excesses in language."
Batet, who after the uproar caused by Vox last week had asked their lordships for manners and responsibility and who spent the morning demanding silence, spoke of the urgency of "promoting coexistence" in Congress as an essential principle to promote that coexistence in the society.
However, Montero alluded, in his response to the president, to an institutional campaign against gender violence by the Xunta de Galicia that warns women – instead of focusing on the aggressors – “blaming them” and added: “ I don't know what you call that."
The PP spokesperson, Cuca Gamarra, took the floor to protest the minister's accusation and minutes later explained to the press that her formation considered what had happened to be "extremely serious" and that in addition to demanding that Batet withdraw the accusation of the session newspaper, the PP blames the president, Pedro Sánchez, for what happened: "Montero cannot sit one more day in the Council of Ministers."
This Wednesday's episode results in the decline of the parliamentary anger that Vox seems to have infected the rest of the groups, but it also strengthens the political line undertaken by the Igualad ministry, based on confronting social machismo.
Precisely last Saturday, in the homage act that Podemos organized for the minister in Madrid, as compensation for the insults from the extreme right, Montero reiterated a rejection that he had already expressed of the so-called "feminization of politics", which he considers a form of of submission to “hetero-patriarchal power”. On the other hand, this is a tactic in line with the conciliatory and transversal approach with which Vice President Yolanda Díaz has wanted to permeate her political platform, Sumar, in response to the unprecedented mobilization that was unleashed by the 8M feminist strike. of 2018.
And at the bottom of all this, also, what happened this Wednesday supposes a challenge from Podemos to the President of the Government, with whom the ministers of Unidas Podemos are very upset this week by the unilaterality of their latest decisions, especially those related to the amendments to the Trans law, the delay of the Families law, the disagreement over the repeal of the Gag law, the amendments to the law against violence against animals, the appointments for the Constitutional and, of course, the Housing law . In the control session, neither the President of the Government nor any of the socialist ministers made an express defense of the role of the Minister of Equality in the law of only yes is yes. Not even the Minister of Justice, Pilar Llop, expressly questioned by the PP.
In other words, behind this transformation of the chamber into a mob is the impregnation of the upcoming electoral cycle.
