The still Minister of Equality, Irene Montero and the Minister of Equality and Feminisms Tània Verge, staged this Friday a dialogue on feminism organized by the Government of the Generalitat that was especially relevant due to the current political context. Nine days before the elections, the minister has not played a leading role in the campaign of Yolanda Díaz’s coalition, but her name has been regularly on the lips of the ERC candidate for Congress Gabriel Rufián, who has vindicated the political figure of the minister to attack Yolanda Díaz and one of the direct rivals of the Republicans in Catalonia, En Comú Podem.
The act ‘Let’s defend feminist rights’, held at the Palau Robert in Barcelona and moderated by the Government’s spokesperson, Patricia Plaja, was dressed in the institutionality provided by the letterhead of the Generalitat de Catalunya and the presence of ministers such as Ester Capella, but the appointment picked in the commons for fear that it was considered an electoral act.
Before a large representation of ERC and a delegation of the commons headed by Jéssica Albiach, Montero stuck to defending women’s rights in the face of a “reactionary wave of questioning of feminism”, and called to “protect alliances” between the ” multinational majority that has been at the foot of the canyon” in this legislature.
Montero called to “protect the coalition, protect the multinational investiture majority and protect feminism” because “they are democratic tasks of the first order,” he insisted, thus vindicating the work carried out by his ministry in favor of women’s rights.
The minister also made reference to “political violence”, which she defined as a strategy that is exercised to leave political leaders alone and break alliances between women: “It is a strategy to curb rights, it makes us doubt ourselves.”
Montero was much more restrained than Verge, who in a veiled criticism of Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz, critics of “trench feminism”, pointed out that “this is not the time for weak responses, nor to hide the feminist policies that have been made , nor to veto people”, nor to say that “some feminist discourses give arguments to the extreme right, because it is a lie and it is outrageous”.
The minister also warned of the impact that the lack of top-level structures such as her department or the ministry led by Montero could have on the lives of women and people from the LGTBIQ community. In this sense, he mentioned the decisions adopted in this regard in the Valencian Community and the Balearic Islands, “where they are seeing how their rights are violated” with the elimination of high-level feminist organizations after the formation of the new governments as a result of the regional elections of this 2023.
