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A tale of two rallies: Women’s Day in Spain shows deep feminism divisions

Rival Women's Day rallies in several Spanish cities on Wednesday showcased divisions in Spain's feminism movement and its government coalition over recent controversial gender legislation.

Published: 9 March 2023 10:43 CET

A tale of two rallies: Women's Day in Spain shows deep feminism divisions

Women hold placards and shout slogans during an M8 protest in Madrid. Photo: Thomas COEX/AFP

Rallies held across Spain for International Women’s Day (referred to simply as ‘8M’ in Spanish) on March 8th have revealed deep divisions within Spanish feminism, the governing coalition, and the country at large.

The divisions stem from the raft of controversial legislation pushed by the PSOE-Podemos coalition over the last year, including a gender recognition law and the backfiring ‘Solo sí es sí’ sexual consent law that accidentally led to the release of rapists and reduced the sentences for hundreds of sexual convicts.

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In certain cities, including Madrid, Valencia, Sevilla, Valladolid y León, there were even two separate marches: one organised by the 8M Commission, a movement with strong ties to Podemos and Equality Minister Irene Montero, the ideological driving force behind much of the legislation, and the other by Madrid’s feminist group Movimiento Feminista de Madrid.

Some protestors at the Movimiento Feminista de Madrid march called for Montero’s resignation, and 2023 is actually the second year that different factions within the feminist movement have held different M8 rallies.

It should be said that thousands of women also took to the streets across Spain in Bilbao, Cádiz, Huelva, Logroño, Mérida, Palma, Segovia or Zaragoza, in one unified march.

PSOE government ministers hold a banner during a demonstration marking the International Women’s Day in Madrid on March 8, 2023. Photo: Thomas COEX/AFP

Controversial legislation

Gender legislation, something that has been at the forefront of Montero’s policy agenda in the year since, including the bitterly contested Ley de Trans, has deepened the divides in both the feminist movement and government.

Though recently passed abortion legislation, which introduced menstrual leave and made accessing abortions in public hospitals easier, has been widely supported, the gender recognition bill passed last year has deeply divided feminists.

Supporters of the bill, which effectively makes changing gender an administrative rather than health or legal matter, view it as a progressive step forward. Some more traditional feminists, however, view it as regressive and anti-women. In the M8 march in Madrid, protestors from the Movimiento Feminista de Madrid carried banners saying: ‘M8 is for women.’

Protestors hold banners during a students demonstration marking the International Women’s Day in Barcelona on March 8, 2023. (Photo by LLUIS GENE / AFP)

Political divisions

Divisions have also emerged at the political level. Faced with the backlash from the ‘Solo sí es sí’ law and controversy over gender recognition, splits between Pedro Sánchez’s PSOE and its junior coalition partner, Unidas Podemos, have widened.

These were highlighted once again, the day before 8M, when PSOE voted in support of amendments to the sexual consent law, siding with opposition parties rather than their coalition partner.

Spain’s Minister for Economy and Digital Transformation, Nadia Calviño, said in the Spanish press this week that she “regretted that there are disputes” within government, adding that “it seems there are divisions that are incomprehensible to society as a whole” with regards to reforming the law.

She did, however, describe the Trans Law as “positive and necessary” and called for unity.

Feminist country

An Ipsos study released the week of M8 found that Spain is the ‘most feminist country’ in Europe. After polling people in 32 countries, Spain came out on top as the country most supportive and aware of equal rights between men and women.

Over half of Spaniards (53 percent) identify as “feminist”: a 9 percent increase on five years ago (44 percent). For context, in Portugal this figure is 46 percent, and in France 45 percent.

In Spain, just 36 percent of respondents polled said they did not identify as feminists.

True though this may be, and as strong as the feminist movement is in Spain, as this week’s M8 protests have demonstrated, it’s certainly not without its internal fissures. As calls for reforms to recent legislation intensifies, expect these divides to further deepen, particularly at the political level as Spain edges towards a general election at the end of the year.

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Why regional elections in Catalonia matter to Spain's future

Sunday May 12th will see regional elections in Catalonia at a time when political uncertainty and unpredictability reigns not only in the northern region but across the country. As such, the results could, and likely will, have political ramifications at the national level, perhaps even on the stability of the government itself.

If you follow Spanish politics, you’ll have probably noticed that there’s been quite a lot going on recently. And even if you aren’t a semi-obsessive politico, Spanish politics has been so melodramatic, so unpredictable and (at times) so ridiculous, that in recent months it’s been hard to ignore.

In short: Socialist (PSOE) Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez made a pact with Catalan separatist parties to stay in power after last summer’s general election. Part of this was an amnesty law that granted a legal amnesty to people involved in the failed 2017 referendum independence bid, but it caused outrage across many parts of the country and led to weeks of protests, some of which were violent.

Though Sánchez faced a lot of public ire, Carles Puigdemont, the former President of Catalonia who is a fugitive from Spanish law, takes the brunt of the hatred, particularly from the Spanish right and far-right. Puigdemont is running again in the regional election on May 12th, and has already stated that he will leave politics if he isn’t re-elected.

More recently, Sánchez shocked the country by publishing a highly personal letter on Twitter/X, reportedly released without the advice of his advisors or cabinet colleagues, stating that he was taking five days out to consider his future following repeated attacks against his wife over alleged influence peddling. This came right before the Catalan campaign kicked off and essentially brought politics to a standstill and left the country in limbo.

Sánchez then disappeared from public life, shut himself away in his La Moncloa residence and considered his future, leaving the country in the midst of what felt like a telenovela – a soap opera. On Monday he announced he was staying on and attempted to use the decision as a pivot moment to reinvigorate his government, strengthen Spanish democracy, and to make a stand against what Sánchez describes as the far-right ‘mud machine’.

Others view things differently. While Sánchez supporters see the debacle as a brave affront to right-wing harassment and lawfare tactics used against him, critics have described it as farcical, manipulative, and opposition Partido Popular leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo said that Sánchez had “made a fool of himself” and embarrassed Spain on the global scene.

Many view the move as cynical electioneering, and Sánchez does indeed have a well deserved reputation as a somewhat machiavellian political maneuverer.

But how can Sánchez’s five day mini-sabbatical be electioneering if Spain had elections as recently as last summer? Here’s where the upcoming Catalan elections come in again.

Why regional elections in Catalonia matter to Spain’s future

In short: the results of the Catalan elections have the potential to disrupt the delicate power balance in Madrid.

Some context: in the Catalan regional government, pro-independence parties Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), Junts per Catalunya (Puigdemont’s party) and the smaller Candidatura d’Unitat Popular (CUP) have an absolute majority. This allowed separatist parties, namely ERC and Junts, greater political leverage when negotiating the amnesty with Sánchez and the PSOE last year.

Though some, particularly in Junts, would like the amnesty (which is still yet to be approved in the Senate) to go further, the national government has more or less survived since the summer based on this uneasy truce. Depending on the results in Catalonia on May 12th, we may see just how fragile it really is.

Exiled Catalan separatist leader, MEP and founder of the Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia) party Carles Puigdemont gives a speech during a meeting to present his list for the upcoming regional elections in Catalonia, in Elna, southwestern France. (Photo by Matthieu RONDEL / AFP)

What do the polls say? Most seem to have the PSC (the PSOE’s sister party in Catalonia) making big gains and becoming the biggest party in the Generalitat, with leader Salvador Illa becoming President. According to RTVE’s average of polls, the PSC is on course to win 39 seats, six more than in 2021. Junts is projected to be in second place with 32 seats and would thus overtake ERC, which would get 28, a loss of 5 seats, though some polls put ERC in second and Junts third.

However, no poll gives the PSC an absolute majority of 68 seats needed to govern alone. As such, the PSC, should it win, will require the votes of far-left Comuns-Sumar, but also a coalition arrangement with a pro-independence party, most likely ERC.

However, polling from El Nacional, a Catalan newspaper, estimates that undecided voters still make up a third (33.5 percent) of the Catalan electorate, so there will likely be some variation from polling data to the results on election day.

Interestingly, Sánchez’s five day reflection period seems to have actually boosted PSOE polling numbers overall on a national level. According to a flash poll taken following the letter, the PSOE vote intention surged.

But the move has not proven popular with politicians in Catalonia, particularly among the pro-independence parties Sánchez’s government relies on in Madrid. The current President of the Generalitat and ERC candidate Pere Aragonès accused Sánchez of exploiting the “empathy” of the Spanish public “for an exclusively political purpose”, describing the “five day comedy” as “yet another electoral manoeuvre.”

The ERC has even made a complaint to Spain’s electoral authority about Sánchez’s decision and subsequent interview on Spanish state TV, claiming it could have breached electoral rules by favouring the PSOE candidacy in the Catalan election.

Junts general secretary Jordi Turull, meanwhile, has accused Sánchez of “interfering in the Catalan election.”

Remember, these are the parties that prop up the Sánchez government at the national level.

Protesters hold up a banner reading “Pedro (Sánchez), traitor” and “Spain is not for sale” during an anti-amnesty protest in Madrid. (Photo by Pierre-Philippe MARCOU / AFP)

Potential scenarios

So, it’s safe to say that things are tense in Spanish politics. Sánchez has angered a lot of people with his period of reflection — not only his opponents but also those who prop up his government in Congress. Conversely, the move does seem to have increased PSOE support overall ahead of polling day, and the PSC seems to be on course to win in Catalonia.

With no party likely to win an absolute majority, the Catalan results on May 12th will require coalitions, which could in turn have a ripple effect on alliances in Madrid. This is principally because there is a possibility that ERC or Junts could be left out of the Generalitat, which could remove the incentive for one (or even both, in the unlikely event of a PSC absolute majority) pro-independence parties to keep Sánchez in the Moncloa, or at the very least to demand more from him.

The polls suggest the most likely outcome is the PSC winning the elections but needing the support of ERC. At the national level, this could lead to a split in the separatist movement and would leave Junts’ support in Congress up in the air. Junts could theoretically withdraw its support, topple the government, and trigger further general elections.

Another scenario touted by political pundits is that pro-independence parties could again win an absolute majority between them. This would heap further political pressure on Sánchez, who, after already spending a lot of political capital on the amnesty law, would likely be pressured for further concessions from the Generalitat, namely another referendum but also changes to the amnesty law. Separatist parties would point to their victory, against polling predictions, as a mandate for pushing the pro-independence movement further.

Of course, there’s also the (admittedly unlikely) possibility that Junts per Catalunya win an absolute majority and Puigdemont becomes President of the region, something that would set the scene for his return to Spain and send shockwaves through Spanish politics.

Perhaps there is no better indication of how important this election is than the fact that Sánchez’s first public appearance since his ‘will he, won’t he’ resignation stunt was at the Fería de Barcelona.

Whatever happens in Catalonia on May 12th, two things seem certain: firstly, that people from across the country will be tuning in for the results; and secondly, as the last few years have shown, predictions are essentially useless and anything can happen in Spanish politics.

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