Dramaturgy only. No substantive novelty contributed to the debate in the Congress of Deputies regarding the consideration of the unilateral socialist reform of the government's law on the Comprehensive Guarantee of Sexual Freedom. But the dramaturgy was pure Lorca: women consumed, confronted, harassed and subjugated by machismo, boycotting each other. The house of Bernarda Alba, in plenary version. She missed Bernarda, hitting the ground with her cane: "Silence, I say!" Because the arguments of one and the other, overwrought these months until they had lost their drawing and meaning, appeared turned into slogans of one against the other, of one against the other.
Arguments worn and brilliant as a handrail in a month in which there has not been the slightest attempt to negotiate an agreed solution between the government partners -or to hide it from their constituents-, nor from these with the progressive majority of the investiture, That is how she reached the plenary session: furious. The result was the predictable bad faces, deputies throwing reproaches at each other and a first procedure of the missile against the norm that is the figurehead of surpassed government feminism, under the socialist auspices, with the enthusiastic and also irritated support of all the territorial and state right-wing. A few hours from March 8. The damage to the feminist flank of the executive could not have been one bit greater.
For this reason, the most eloquent part of the session was listening to the deputies of Esquerra, Pilar Balañà, Ciudadanos, Sara Jiménez, and CUP, Mireia Vehí. They did not defend the same vote but rather the opposite – of the three groups, only Ciudadanos supported taking the reform into consideration – but the three of them turned to their government partners angrily and eloquently expressed the embarrassment of participating in such a debate at Just a few hours after 8-M, the horror at the true fact that the Government, all of it, has allowed its internal disputes to have permeated the day of feminist celebration and combat and has done so knowingly.
"I don't want to hear them talk about sorority again, allies... They have broken everything." "We are witnessing how a government ministry violates a law from another ministry." That's how expressive was the Republican deputy Pilar Balañá who expressed her shame for having to go up to the rostrum before such a proposal. "Stay away from the low-rise policy to which we are getting used to day in, day out, to talk about this law," demanded Sara Jiménez, who asked Podemos less arrogance and more diligence from the PSOE, which she blamed for having brought the debate at the end of March 8.
Vehí was tougher and reproached the PSOE, in addition to violating the law with a proposal that denatures the law, for allowing itself the luxury of “patrolling the borders of feminism”, an allusion not affectionately to the recent words of Carmen Calvo. He accused Podemos of trying to "heritage feminism" and divert attention: "This debate only serves to cover up the central issues of 8-M and not talk about what needs to be talked about, the migration law, rights of sex workers, of endometriosis...”.
The speech of Bel Pozueta from EH-Bildu was not much kinder, who asked the partners for responsibility and warned "Do not debate in the media and do not use feminist forces."
The presence of the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, was not foreseen in the debate, since she had to appear in the Senate, but a change in the agenda of the Upper House meant that she could appear in plenary session. Montero, sitting next to the Minister of Social Rights, and with her hair in a Lorca updo, replied with her gestures to what was happening in the rostrum. But above all to the intervention of Andrea Fernández, secretary of feminism of the PSOE and in charge of defending the socialist initiative against the Equality law. Fernández did not want to pass for lukewarm: "Ladies of Unidas Podemos, we want to know your proposals - allusion to the initiatives to reform the law that Equality has never made known -, we are tired of your rants." Her call to her responsibility earned her a proud hug from spokesperson Patxi López upon his return to the seat.
The intervention of United We Can was not far behind in harshness. The deputy Lucía Muñoz Dalda acted as spokesperson, who proclaimed a no pasarán, regarding consent, and launched the obvious reproach: "The PSOE has allied with the PP and Vox to ask us again if we close our legs."
In the end, the numbers were clear: the PSOE achieved the support of two-thirds of the chamber for taking it into consideration – all the regional and state right-wing, and the ultra-right abstention – and only 58 votes against. For government partners, in reality the issue is even worse: after contaminating 8-M with their battle, there is no indication that the parliamentary process will end in agreement. The coalition's feminist flag, tattered, trampled to the pavement by short-term calculations. Satisfied smiles in the PP. The spokesperson, Cuca Gamarra, swelled in the centrism rostrum: "Sánchez hides behind the women of his government and his party", one of those round phrases that are feminist and macho at the same time because they say one thing and the opposite. .
