Valencia is currently resisting the tension and division that the feminist movement is experiencing in Madrid. As happened last year, two different marches will tour the streets of the capital to commemorate a date as important as 8M. In Valencia, on the other hand, the unitary march is maintained (the Feminist Assembly of Valencia does propose an alternative agenda), despite the fact that the discrepancies are evident.
It was already seen in the massive event of 2022, where different slogans followed one another after the same header, some of them antagonistic. However, unity prevailed in the face of the increase in cases of gender violence.
This year everything indicates that something similar will happen despite the evident tensions between the left-wing parties on issues such as the Trans Law, the abolition of Prostitution and even the Law of only yes is yes.
Yesterday the Valencian socialists presented their campaign for 8M, International Women’s Day, under the rather clarifying slogan: ‘Facing machismo: free, united and without fear’. In this line, the deputy general secretary of the party, Ana Domínguez, claimed “the unity of feminism for this next 8M” and remarked that “the only enemy of feminism, if there is any enemy for feminists, is patriarchy and machismo”.
Along these lines, she stressed that this year the Socialists wanted to focus “on how strong and powerful feminism is when it is united to confront machismo, one of the main problems to be solved in our society.”
Yesterday Domínguez avoided the usual abolitionist allegation of his party for the sake of this unity. We will have to see what happens when, in the Board of Trustees prior to the last plenary session of the legislature, the PSPV must decide if it tries to include on the agenda two modifications of regional laws to advance towards that objective of the abolition of prostitution or opts (consciously that there is no consensus on the matter among the government partners) to drop their proposals. “We believe that there are other priority laws,” they pointed out from Podem.
And it is that, despite those calls to unity yesterday, the truth is that the controversies are still latent. Domínguez did not want to go into details yesterday either, but to questions from journalists, he made it clear that the approval of the Trans Law promoted by the Ministry of Equality was not shared 100% by his party.
More direct was the deputy mayor of Valencia, Sandra Gómez, who did take advantage of the press conference to ask Podemos for “reflection” and “political maturity” so that it accepts the modification to the Law of the only yes is yes that the Party has proposed Socialist.
“It is a good law that has placed consent at the center to decide if there has been violence and that is essential for the presumption of truthfulness of women, but it has had consequences that nobody expected and that must be amended immediately,” the candidate launched. socialist to the Valencia City Council.
