The only concrete agreement with a specified date reached by the president of the central government and general secretary of the PSOE, Pedro Sánchez, and the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, at the meeting they held on December 22 in Congress, in the midst of a climate of maximum hostility between the two formations, he reformed article 49 of the Constitution to eliminate the term handicapped and replace it with people with disabilities, and register this reform in the Lower House before finishing the year. And with this goal in mind, the teams of both formations commanded by the Minister of the Presidency, Relations with the Courts and Justice, Félix Bolaños, for the socialist side, and the general secretary of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, for the popular part
The fruit of these negotiations arrived yesterday afternoon, exhausting the time that the two parties had granted, with the registration of the bill in the Lower House – which provides for a law on disability and pays special attention to women and minors – with the signature of the socialist and popular parliamentary groups and with the request for their processing by the emergency procedure and single reading, as agreed by Sánchez and Feijóo.
This was announced yesterday in an identical statement by both groups, who want the bill to be taken into consideration and voted on in a monographic plenary session in January, with this single item on the agenda, and therefore not pass by parliamentary committee, thus speeding up the procedure. In this way, the reform will be definitively approved in January and its entry into force will take place on the same day as its text is published in the BOE.
The PSOE and the PP will only include amendments if both parties give the go-ahead, and have agreed that they will not accept a referendum on the reform, something that no parliamentary group has so far proposed for an issue that generates a large social and political consensus.
In this sense, Feijóo, after confirming the final agreement, celebrated yesterday that the reform “means paying a debt with almost 10% of the population” that represents “the world of disability”, although he asked the members of the Central Government to undertake not to “maliciously use the world of disability to raise a referendum or issues other than those indicated in Article 49”.
The text, agreed also with the Spanish Committee of Representatives of Persons with Disabilities, has two points. In the first section, it states: “People with disabilities exercise the rights provided for in this title in real and effective conditions of freedom and equality. The special protection that is necessary for this exercise will be regulated by law.” And in the second section he points out: “The public authorities will promote policies that guarantee the full personal autonomy and social inclusion of people with disabilities, in universally accessible environments. Likewise, they will encourage the participation of their organizations, in the terms established by law. The specific needs of women and children with disabilities will be attended to in particular”.
