Months after national elections, far-right party Vox still threatens gender justice in Spain

On April 28, progressives and feminists in Spain collectively held their breaths as the country went to the polls to decide its future. It would be a decisive day for the country’s women especially, who—when it came to gender justice—stood to lose more than they would gain.

Vox, the far-right political party notorious for its anti-abortion, anti-immigration, and anti-feminist platform, was long considered an outsider until January of this year, when it broke into regional politics in southern Andalusia, winning enough seats to wedge its way into a governing coalition on the right. What would it mean for women in Spain if Vox, a party that has ridiculed gender activists as “feminazis” and appears vehemently against what it calls “gender ideology”—including legislation governing gender violence—suddenly came to hold political influence on the national stage? The threat of such a possibility loomed large for many the day of the general elections. The fear was, it seemed, extinguished the day after the elections, as the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) was declared the official winner. But, two months on, a clear direction for Spain’s political future has yet to be determined.

PSOE won the general elections in April and European elections in May, and now represents the largest social democratic party in European parliament. Yet Pedro Sanchez, leader of PSOE, still has not been officially sworn in as prime minister. His party fell short of the number of seats it needed for a working majority in the chamber, so it will have to rely on cross-party support before he can assume leadership.

Meanwhile, worries remain that Vox is continuing to edge its way into mainstream politics. Not only did the far-right party gain seats in Spanish parliament in the general elections—as well as in European parliament in May—in mid-June, Vox managed to form a second coalition government, this time in the city council of Madrid.

Where, then, does the country stand on gender rights, after both feminist activism and political extremism pushed the issue to the forefront of voters’ consciousness in municipal, national, and European elections?

Gender violence and gender justice in Spain

Perhaps the most contentious issue for women in Spain, and the principal focus for progressives and feminists in the country, is the persistence of gender violence, and the failures of the political and judicial systems to address it.

While Spain is not considered the most violent country in Europe for women—coming in below the EU’s average percentage for women who’ve experienced physical or sexual violence since age 15—that number is still high. In the first four months of 2019, Spain’s ministry of the interior recorded 29 charges of sexual violence a day, a 60-percent increase over the last six years.

Spain’s judicial approach to handling cases of violence against women is inconsistent and, at times, outdated and impartial. The most recent example of how contradictory judicial opinion on sexualized violence can be is the highly publicized trial of  “La Manada” (“The Wolf Pack”), in which an 18-year-old woman was raped by five men at the 2016 Running of the Bulls festival in Pamplona. Because Spain’s penal code dictates that there must be signs of aggression or violence for a rape conviction to be upheld—even when it’s clear that there was no consent to the sexual act in question—the defendants were first given a lesser charge of sexual abuse by the High Court of Navarra. In the verdict, a dissenting Judge Ricardo Javier González even argued that all charges should be dropped against the defendants. He described seeing “an atmosphere of revelry and rejoice” in the video footage the men had taken and suggested that the victim was heard on camera making “sounds that emit sexual excitement.”

The original verdict, served on the April 26, 2018, caused hundreds of thousands of women to take to the streets across the country, chanting “Yo, si te creo” (“I believe you”). The hashtag “#Cuéntalo” – “Tell Your Story”,#Cuéntalo (Tell Your Story) was posted by journalist Cristina Fallarás as a Spanish #MeToo, inviting women across the country to share their experiences of sexualized violence. For the past two years, millions of women across Spain have participated in both strike action and mass demonstrations on the March 8, International Women’s Day, to show continued strength for the feminist movement.

On June 21, Spain’s supreme court overturned the judgment of the High Court of Navarra, stating that “there was an authentic scenario of intimidation in which the victim could never consent,” instating the charge of rape for the defendants and sentencing them to 15 years in prison, as well as a total fine of €100,000 in compensation to the victim.

Feminist activist Barbijaputa, who writes for the Spanish publication El Diario, expressed relief that the verdict finally lifted the heavy onus of proof on victims when it comes to instances of rape. She wrote, “A conviction like this, in such a publicized case … it will reach all corners of the country that five men will go to jail for 15 years because of the charges pressed by a girl, who didn’t tell them no, who didn’t try to run and who didn’t show any bruises after the rape.”

While the final judgment is yet to be published, excerpts from the preliminary judgment add fuel to the fire in the demand for criminal justice reform on charges of sexualized violence.

Threatening women’s access to justice

The most openly critical politician over the Supreme Court’s verdict has been Francisco Serrano, parliamentary representative for Vox in Andalusia and a former judge. In a tweet, captured by Europa Press but later removed, Serrano accused the judges of being influenced by “the media and politicians,” and later in a Facebook post (which was also deleted), suggested that this was a verdict ruled by the “feminist supremacist mob.” In the same Facebook post, Serrano argued that “the safest relationship between a man and a woman will only be through prostitution” and that “not performing to a woman’s expectations could end in prison.”

The formal spokesperson for Vox, Alejandro Hernandez, denied that Serrano’s comments were in line with that of the party. On the 26th of June, Serrano took more than 30 days sick leave from his position for “health reasons.” In a statement which Europapress had access to, Serrano alludes to the “lynching” he received in the press and media as reason for his temporary leave. Serrano also attributed the comments posted on his Facebook page, to a “new collaborator” for writing something “manifestly incorrect in its form” and far from Serrano’s original words. 

While Vox officially distances itself from such explicit accusations against the judiciary, Serrano’s views are not completely out of line with the party’s track record of targeting feminist activism; as much is evident in how other Vox members have spoken about the verdict. Juan José Liarte Pedreño, Vox’s spokesperson for Murcia—the region where the party received the highest percentage of the vote—called the public prosecutor for the case, Dolores Delgado, a despicable woman and a liar, writing, “all you can expect from a whore is dirty tricks.”

Vox generally opposes the notion that violence is inflicted on women on the basis of their gender. Should it come to power, Vox has vowed to rescind a 2004 law that provides protection to women in situations of gender violence; as much was set out in the party’s electoral mandate for the national elections last April.

Removing that legislation would cut access to legal, economic, and social support for survivors, as well as to preventive gender violence services, such as workshops on early detection for violence. Vox argues that the measure is discriminatory against men and that it instead should be replaced with a law against domestic violence, specifically, to provide protection to men violently abused by their wives.

In an interview with Spain’s leading radio network Cadena Ser, Vox Secretary General Javier Ortega accused feminists of skewing data on the real rate of gender violence, stating, “They don’t allow access to the number of men who die at the hands of women. They hide the data because they are not interested in recognizing [that] men die also, at the hands of women.”

Isabel Paredes of the organization AMUVI spoke to Women Under Siege about the potential negative impact of statements like these by Vox. “If a politician is not trained in gender, and is not trained in the gender perspective, very often their discourse contradicts and normalizes things that we had already gotten over,” she says. “Like this about how men also suffer from violence, we already got over that, [but] if it’s a politician that says it, people will support them and believe them.” 

AMUVI is the only organization that has specialized professionals and services for victims of sexual violence, in an area of the country that experiences some of the highest rates of gender violence. “If there [was] no AMUVI in Andalusia, there would be no reference entity with expert professionals in the care of victims of sexual violence,” Paredes said.

In the leadup to the general elections, El Diario reported that Vox was creating blacklists of social workers, psychologists, and gender violence workers. “They sent a card to all the organizations asking for the names of all the people who work with victims,” Paredes said. “It’s literally persecution.” El Diario later reported that the party continued to request information on gender violence workers after the elections, clearly demonstrating that this an election point it is willing to see to the end.

While, a few months ago, it may have seemed far-fetched that Vox would be successful in influencing policy itself, given the few seats it holds in parliament on the municipal, national, European levels, that is no longer the case in Andalusia.

Vox managed to maneuver negotiations for the fiscal budget in the region in June, delaying their approval until the very last minute, and eventually securing key demands like installing a new phone line for victims of what Vox describes as “intra-familial violence,” as well as setting up a phone line and services for “economically-challenged pregnant women,” with the objective of reducing the rate of abortion.

“Intra-familial violence, as Vox calls it, is what occurs between family members, whichever the member. From father to child, from mother to child, from grandparents to grandchildren…it has a distinct nature,” explained Paz Lloria, co-director of the MA program in Gender Violence and the Law at the University of Valencia, to El Pais. “If they [Vox] convince people that gender violence is like any other kind of violence, it blurs the understanding that we have struggled to achieve.”

The success of Vox in influencing this budget is of both symbolic and strategic value to the party, especially after entering into a coalition with the city council of Madrid. In an agreement with newly-elected mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida and the Citizens party, Vox has already secured the implementation of “a municipal plan of education against all kinds of violence in the intra-familial ambit.” 

Beyond Vox

In the meantime, negotiations between PSOE and the liberal left party Podemos to form a national government have fallen into the background of Vox’s controversial and unexpected impact on regional politics. The symbolic victory for progressives and liberals in the national elections has inevitably been overshadowed by the material policies Vox continues to secure in two important regions in the country. Far from breathing a sigh of relief, feminist activists must brace themselves – they have a fight on their hands.