The most feminist government in history is at odds with 8-M. The coalition arrives again with its swords raised to an anniversary that has not known a peaceful day between the partners since the start of the legislature and that this time has also baffled feminist activism.
The reform of the law that only yes is yes – a star rule of the ministry of Irene Montero – promoted alone by the PSOE already put enough cayenne in the stew for this March 8, but as everything is likely to get worse, or at least to Complicated in a devilish way, the Mediator case – or “the Tito Berni scandal”, the most eloquent baptism of the matter – has modified the landscape, introducing a prostitution case into it that may force everyone to rethink their strategies. In political terms, for the Government the feminist flag is on the ground in tatters.
The first 8-M of the coalition government, that of 2020, already expressed the existing tension in the Council of Ministers, officially due to differences between United We Can and a minority but elite sector of socialist feminism on account of the then future Trans law. Basically, the reason was much more prosaic: the then vice president, Carmen Calvo, never willingly accepted the transfer of the Ministry of Equality to Podemos, in the December 2019 negotiation between Pedro Sánchez and Pablo Iglesias.
But all this was diluted under the outbreak of the pandemic and the hoax launched by sectors of the right and the extreme right stating that the Government had hidden information about the real impact that the covid already had in Spain so as not to tarnish the celebration of that eighth of March. Colonel Diego Pérez de los Cobos wanted to turn the hoax into an investigation by the Civil Guard against the coalition government, which ended up costing him his job.
In 2021 it was the restrictions forced by the pandemic that tarnished the day. The Superior Court of Justice of the Community of Madrid prohibited the demonstration despite the protests of Minister Montero. We had to wait until 2022 to see the flooded streets again, but again with cracks between the positions of the coalition partners: the endless generational discussion between “radical feminism” -contrary to the Trans law- and “queer feminism”. ” –postmodern and supporter of gender self-determination– added a new cutting line: the position before prostitution.
A sector of socialist feminism embraced abolitionism, a position that is not a majority in Unidas Podemos –where regulationists and abolitionists coexist– and that in fact is contrary to the majority position of Catalan feminism, expressed in the Congressional rostrum by both the commons and for the C.U.P. And of course, what the PSOE was missing, which is trying to appropriate the abolitionist flag in this 8-M, is a corruption scandal with drugs and prostitution, not as part of the alleged business but as part of the celebration.
Before tomorrow’s vote to take into consideration the reform of the law of only yes is yes, the PSOE and Unidas Podemos will vote separately. It will be the first time before a rule that is part of the Government’s legislative agenda. The UP parliamentary spokesman warned on Friday, Pablo Echenique: they would vote against it if there was no last-minute agreement. But it is difficult for there to be because the two partners have allowed the three weeks they had to try to defend a common reform of the law, as all their allies have been demanding, without a single sincere threat of negotiation. From the PSOE, they consider that they have already amortized the electoral cost of approving the reform with the PP and remain tied to the literalness of the Llop proposal. From Podemos they consider that it is good for them that the PSOE is portrayed voting against their law allied with the right, and they are sure that they have feminist activism on their side. Because they have not negotiated anything in these weeks, but all the actions of Podemos, the Ministry of Equality, but also the Ministry of Social Rights, headed by Ione Belarra, and the party have focused on monopolizing feminism as a banner of Podemos before the socialists.
Before tomorrow’s vote, for the PSOE the drama is that the last few days have changed the picture a lot. And we can know it. The scandal of “whores and coca” returns the image of a patriarchal and rowdy Spain, which lives and negotiates outside the administrative procedure, smelling of fairies and Varon Dandy and illuminated by flashing neon lights. What was missing, after amending the Animal Protection law to remove hunting dogs from their cloak of rights, as a regrowth of the Berlanguian policy of La escopeta nacional, is to amend their own feminist law with the support of PP and Vox in the middle of a prostitution scandal. That is the grim challenge launched by Podemos. In the PSOE they believe that the review of sentences of the law of only yes is yes is a cost that weakens Podemos and Irene Montero.
At 8-M the coalition partners arrive looking at each other badly and counting the hairs on the cat flap that the rival will leave. As if the pollsters had not certified that the fate of each one is tied to that of the other, in a prisoner’s dilemma executed on the brink of the abyss.
