The number two on the regional Vox list for Valencia, José María Llanos, has indicated this Friday that “gender violence does not exist, sexist violence does not exist.” In statements to TVE, the one who has been this legislature president of the popular parliamentary group (he was also provincial president of the formation led by Santiago Abascal) has stressed that his party understands that people do not have “gender”, but that “they have sex”.
Llanos has made these statements after the controversy broke out over the content of the programmatic agreement signed this Thursday by PP and Vox to govern the Generalitat. In the document, with up to 50 measures, there is no mention of gender violence and the term used by the far-right formation of intrafamily violence is used. Thus, point 43 of the aforementioned agreement states that “the rights of families” will be defended and “policies that will seek to eradicate intra-family violence, especially those suffered by women and children, will be promoted, guaranteeing equality among all victims.
The words of the Vox deputy-elect have received a prompt response from the national leader of the PP, Alberto Nuñez Feijóo. In his Twitter account, the popular leader has replied to the news with Llanos’s statements that “gender violence exists and each murder of a woman shocks us as a society.” Along these lines, he has assured that the PP will not take “not one step back in the fight against this scourge.” And he has launched a warning: “We are not going to give up our principles, whatever it costs us.” Now it remains to be seen how this response articulates with the agreement already signed between the Valencian PP and the Vox negotiators.
Minutes earlier, in the Valencian Parliament, Llanos explained that intra-family violence “means that violence can be generated in affective relationships, and if the victim many more times, as is true, is a woman, she will be more protected with harsher penalties by the governments in which Vox is”.
In this line, he has advanced that his training (soon in the Valencian government) is going to “put an end to these tests, those gender tests that officials and workers are also being forced to take in some companies.”
Gender violence has been one of the most controversial points of the PP and Vox agreement in the Valencian Community. It cannot be forgotten that the national spokesman for the popular, Borja Sémper, pointed out in his day that a red line for them was the presence of the Vox candidate for the Presidency of Les Corts, Carlos Flores, convicted 10 years ago of violence sexist. Before announcing the agreement last Tuesday, Vox sacrificed to Flores that he will be the head of the list for Valencia to the Congress of Deputies in exchange for not entering the autonomous government.
