Three months after the municipal and regional elections of 28-M, most of the governments that came out of the polls have already presented their teams and started their first policies. In the regions where the Popular Party governs, either alone or with the support of Vox, the departments of Equality have been reduced and those of Family have been increased.
Changing the name of the Department of Equality, including it within others or, directly, suppressing it are some of the new measures of the executives led by the right, who are also betting on other cuts such as eliminating those areas related to the 2030 Agenda and sustainability, or democratic memory.
At least eight provincial capitals, three autonomous communities and several municipalities have eliminated the Equality area. After the PP and Vox agreements, the municipalities of Burgos, Valladolid, Toledo and Ciudad Real have replaced their Equality departments with Family ones. In Castelló, where the same colors govern, the local executive has abolished the Department of Feminisms and LGTBI, although it has announced the newly created Department of Family.
In regions where the PP governs alone, similar decisions have also been made. While the Murcia city council has dispensed with the Department of Equality, although they have one for Well-being, Family and Health, in other capitals such as Huelva or Alicante they have integrated policies of this nature into other areas.
This scenario has not only occurred at the municipal level. The regional government of Extremadura, where María Guardiola (PP) governs with Vox, and that of La Rioja, where the popular ones run it alone, have also suppressed their Equality ministries. In the Balearic Islands, a community in which the PP agreed with the far-right party to govern alone in exchange for the presidency of the Balearic Parliament and the governments of the councils of Mallorca and Menorca, the Department of Equality has disappeared, although it has been created a Department of Family.
Likewise, at the municipal level, several localities governed by the right-wing coalition have eliminated their Equality departments to create Family ones. This is the case, for example, of Orihuela (Alicante), Ponferrada (León), Loeches (Community of Madrid), Molina de Segura (Murcia) or Talavera de la Reina (Toledo).
The setback in terms of equality has also been manifested in the speeches of some regional presidents and in the decisions they have taken. The governments of Aragon and the Valencian Community have insisted in their coalition pacts on using the term "domestic violence", avoiding those of "macho violence" or "gender violence".
At the provincial level, the Ciudad Real Provincial Council, governed by PP and Vox, has changed the name of the Shelter to Care for Victims of Gender Violence to simply "Shelter". The Council of the Valencian Community announced that it was going to eliminate the Institut Valencià de les Dones, but they finally rectified it and claimed that it was a "transcription error", after which they have lied intact.
In the Granada town of Maracena, in which the PP governs with a quadripartite in which Vox is, they eliminated the criterion of being a victim of gender violence from the social employment exchange, but after a barrage of criticism from other municipal groups They assured that they were going to create a specific aid for these people for September.
On the other hand, the local executives of the PP of Jerte (Cáceres) and La Solana (Ciudad Real) have received protests for failing to call the minutes of silence in memory of the victims of gender violence. In the first it was carried out every time a sexist murder occurred in the country and in the second at the beginning of each plenary session.
In addition to feminism, another of the groups affected by the change of government in certain regional councils or parliaments is the LGTBI. The Valencian Community, where both the regional executive and the Castelló city council have gone from being led by the left to being led by coalitions of PP and Vox, is one of the territories where this trend is most easily identified.
In Castelló, as previously mentioned, they have eliminated the Department of Feminisms and LGTBI, although it includes both themes within the area of Equality. In Valencia, the PP city council has eliminated the word LGTBI from the Equality delegation while creating the Family, Youth and Childhood delegation.
Likewise, in Lorca (Murcia) the local government has eliminated the Department of Diversity and in Madrid the Almeida council has introduced a change to the detriment of this same area: removing the "s" from the Department of Family. At the regional level, concern is growing over the promise of the governments of the Balearic Islands (PP) and Aragon (PP-VOX) to repeal the trans law, although this has not materialized yet.
Nor in Madrid, where its president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, announced after the first Governing Council in June that she had already drafted a modification of the 2016 Trans-Autonomous Law and would take it to the regional Parliament "in the first session", which It will be held next September or October. On the other hand, the municipalities of municipalities such as Valladolid, Torrijos (Toledo), Vegas de Genil (Granada) or Náquera (Valencia), all governed by PP and Vox except the last one, in which this last group governs alone, received criticism for remove LGTBI or trans flags from their facades.
Culture has also been affected in some municipalities led for the first time by coalitions where Vox has entered. In Santa Cruz de Bezana (Cantabria), the new executive decided to remove the children's film "Lightyear", in which there is a kiss between two women, from the summer film offer.
A similar controversy arose in the Toledo city council with the play "La Infamia", by the Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho, which was going to be performed on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, on the 25th of November. The PSOE considered that it was "censorship" due to ideology, but the PP responded that the piece was still "not contracted" and that they had to "prioritize".
In the towns of Valdemorillo (Madrid) and Briviesca (Burgos) the works of "Orlando", by Virginia Wolf, and "El Mar", by the Republican professor Antoni Benaiges, were canceled, respectively, the first for economic reasons and the second for technical reasons. , according to the executives.The city council of Palma, for its part, also suspended the programming of the play "Nua", which deals with eating disorders, presumably due to lack of budget.
