“It matters what, not with whom.” The spokesman for the socialist parliamentary group, Patxi López, assured last Monday that his party would not negotiate with the PP the bill registered against the criteria of Podemos to correct the law of ‘only yes is yes’ and once again distinguish between sexual acts not consented to with or without violence and intimidation. But government sources and the PSOE leadership qualify this position. Pedro Sánchez assumed a couple of weeks ago that he could not afford to ignore one more day the “social alarm” caused by the hundreds of reductions in sentences for sexual assault produced since the entry into force of the norm, on October 7, and already nothing will stop you. Nor the position of his partners.
The Socialists still aspire to convince the allies of the investiture bloc that the “technical solution” designed by the Ministry of Justice for judges to reapply the penalties prior to the unification of the crimes of assault and sexual abuse, one of the keys to the law of ‘only yes is yes’, it is unavoidable, but they will not have it easy. Most of them already warned on Tuesday that they did not want to have to choose between what the PSOE proposes and what Podemos defends (that the socialist proposal de facto dynamites the law and implies a return to the “probationary ordeal” in which women are are forced to prove, with the “marks of their body”, that they did not consent).
The ERC spokesman, Gabriel Rufíán, even defended that any reform would have to have the approval of Equality. In the PSOE, however, they consider that this phase has passed. The negotiation is already in Congress and will be led by the party’s deputy general secretary, María Jesús Montero, and the Minister of the Presidency Félix Bolaños who, for the moment, have not spoken with Podemos. Socialist sources take it for granted, in fact, that they will not have the support of the purples in the first of the debates that their proposal must overcome, that of taking it into consideration.
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The general secretary of Podemos and Minister of Social Rights, Ione Belarra, assured this Wednesday, in this sense, that her intention is “to work for the agreement”, but she also insisted that her formation will be “very firm” to avoid the setback which, in his opinion, implies the text of his coalition partners. «It is important to understand that women do not fight a name change, we do not fight that everything be called sexual assault. We fought for the perspective of the judges who judge these cases to be changed; In this case, the focus cannot be on whether the victim resisted or not, but on whether she consented or not,” she argued.
With these cards on the table, the possibility that Sánchez has to resort to the PP to save an initiative that, on the other hand, is very similar to the one proposed in December by the first opposition party, is becoming increasingly plausible. The President of the Government ignored yesterday the outstretched but bile-filled hand of the popular parliamentary spokesperson, Cuca Gamarra, in the government control session. The also general secretary of the PP accused the head of the Executive of being sectarian and asserted that if she now rectifies it, it is not because she thinks of women, but because she sees the position in danger. And Sánchez replied that he always “shows his face” and assumes his responsibilities, not like Alberto Núñez Feijóo, of whom he said that he relies on Vox to “throw the stone and hide his hand.”
social restlessness
However, beyond the dialectical games, the two big parties agree that society demands that, in such sensitive cases, politics act now. In Feijóo’s environment they assure that if the Justice proposal gives “legal certainty”, they will be “coherent” and will vote in favor. And in the socialist wing of the Government they emphasize that they have “no fear” of that support. “Our problem is not here inside – a senior socialist leader remarked this Wednesday in the halls of Congress in reference to her relationship with her partners – our problem is outside. And on the street this generates enormous concern.
At this point in the game, Sánchez is clear that the cost of not reforming the law, even with his political antagonist, would exceed the cost of remaining idly by to avoid the schism in the government coalition a little over three months from now. the regional and municipal ones. And this despite the fact that all the elements are in place so that between now and the elections on May 28 the wound of the ‘yes is yes’ remains open in the channel.
If no one maneuvers to avoid it (for example, by forcing the holding of two plenary sessions in one week, as happened with the express reform of sedition and embezzlement), the debate to take the socialist proposal into consideration will take place the same week of the 8th of March, which guarantees another Women’s Day to the brawl. The processing can take between one and two months. However, both the PSOE and Podemos continue without contemplating a break in the coalition. Belarra came to argue this Wednesday that this crisis is just “one more example” of the “tension” that “the entire legislature has already been seeing.”