The PSOE has carried out its reform of the law for the comprehensive guarantee of sexual freedom – known as the 'Only yes is yes' law – in the Justice commission and the paper will be taken to the plenary session next Thursday, modifying and hardening the qualification of the crimes of assault and rape and introducing violence as a substantive part of the criminal offense.
The PSOE has negotiated the wording of this amendment with the PP and has achieved the support of the popular, Ciudadanos and the PNV, and the vote against its government partner, the confederal group of Unidas Podemos, as well as the groups of the left, ERC and EH Bildu, who describe the reform as regressive.
The attempts by Unidas Podemos and the Ministry of Equality for the PSOE to agree with the investiture bloc to amend the law, avoiding the reintroduction of violence and intimidation in the criminal offense, have not borne fruit, and the socialist group has preferred to remove the amendment designed by the Minister of Justice, Pilar Llop, agreed with the conservative groups.
In the commission, this Tuesday, both Unidas Podemos and Esquerra and Bildu made their position ugly to the socialists, recalling that they have agreed to modify the law with those who did not support it and who have always voted against feminist regulatory advances.
The three groups, which promoted reforms that also introduced a hardening of the criminal offense for violence and intimidation, but as aggravating circumstances, outside the definition of criminal offenses. According to these groups, this was the only way to maintain consent as the core of the definition of the crime, as established in the Istanbul Convention, and avoid the ordeal of evidence for victims that crimes against sexual freedom have become.
The rectification of the law will reach the plenary session of the Congress of Deputies this Thursday, when the final vote takes place.
