Spain's far right hates not only immigrants, but also women

Leader of far-right VOX Santiago Abascal and regional candidate Francisco Serrano celebrate results after the Andalusian regional elections in Seville Dec 2, 2018 [File: Marcelo Del Pozo/Reuters]


. . . . .

Like the Northern League in Italy, the National Rally in France and the Alternative for Germany, Vox also wants to shut down mosques, erect walls and deport immigrants. While the party's political and economic proposals are similar to those of other extreme parties throughout Europe, they include another alarming feature: hate for gender equality movements.

Vox, like Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro, denounces "gender ideology" as a threat to heteronormative, Christian, and white family values. According to the party programme, men and woman are already equal and so there is no need for specials laws against domestic violence to protect women's rights. Measures to fight gender violence are "ideological" and "discriminatory" against men. These measures - introduced by the Socialist Party government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in 2004 to crack down on gender-based violence - offer free legal aid and established special courts for victims.

Although these measures are still necessary - at least 47 women in Spain were killed by their partners or ex-partners last year - Vox believes the problem lies in false accusations that ruin men's lives and that the media ignores. This is probably why Abascal often picks fights with journalists. "In Spain's recent democracy," as writer and journalist Cristina Fallaras pointed out, "there hasn't been an open, institutional, and belligerent discourse against woman and their rights. It has now arrived [with Vox]."

But Vox wants not only to repeal these gender measures, but also to eliminate subsidised feminist groups, create a Ministry of the Family and introduce "an organic law protecting the natural family, which shall be recognised as an institution that came before the State". While they also seek to abolish laws protecting abortion and gay marriage, their goal, as veteran Spanish feminist Ana Maria Perez del Campo said, is to "stop in the advance of women's rights". It should not come as a surprise that their regional leader, Francisco Serrano, a former judge, was suspended by the Supreme Court after altering visitation arrangements in a custody case in favour of the father without calling the mother to the hearing. As a radical opponent of feminism, Serrano considers himself "a victim of gender-based jihadism".
. . . . .


https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/spain-hates-immigrants-women-190120105425265.html