© EFE
The candidate for the presidency of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo (EFE)
Since you signed your first government pact with Vox, the PP walks through quicksand. Alberto Núñez Feijóo aspires to stamp his own political and ideological stamp on the formation that he will preside over, de facto, from April 1, but the unprecedented agreement with those of Santiago Abascal in Castilla y León threatens to overshadow the first bars of his mandate. This Thursday, the Galician leader has been forced to back down following suggesting in a press conference that the vicarious violencethat which aims to harm a woman through her loved ones, is not gender violence, but intrafamiliarthus validating Vox’s ideology on this issue.
“Some time ago we had to suffer the murder caused by a father who, due to a problem with his partner, murdered his two children. That is not sexist violence, that is domestic violence,” Feijóo said in an intervention following the usual meeting of the Council of the Xunta. With these words, the next leader of the opposition tried to take iron away from the controversial statements by the Andalusian Minister of Health, Jesus Aguirre, which gave another twist to the PP script on sexist mistreatment and defended “intrafamily violence” as a preferable term to “gender violence” for “being more representative”, to the extent that the first includes the second. Both Feijóo and Aguirre ended up qualifying his words.
While the Andalusian leader reaffirmed on Twitter his “resounding” commitment to the obvious “scourge” once morest women, the next leader of the PP also used social networks to clarify that he does consider vicarious aggression to be a type of gender violence. However, both one and the other have accepted, in part, the speech of the party led by Santiago Abascalsince in all their proclamations they include their commitment to fight once morest “all kinds of violence”.
My commitment once morest gender violence is resounding. It is a scourge that we all have to fight to eradicate. Zero tolerance for any kind of violence.
– Jesus Aguirre (@jesusraguirre) March 17, 2022
In the PP they defend themselves from criticism by understanding that, unlike Vox, their commitment to equality policies are a red line insurmountable, and that the proof of this is the legislation promoted by the popular in this matter. In Galicia, Feijóo promoted a year ago the reform of the gender violence law for the comprehensive protection of victims of vicarious aggression, an action that he has claimed this Thursday on social networks following the ‘slip’ in the matter. “Galicia knows what it is like for a father to kill his children to harm the mother, and it was not considered gender violence. For this reason, Galicia changed the law,” he reiterated on Twitter, adding: “Let no one doubt that We will fight once morest all violence and that we will not take a single step back in the fight once morest sexist violence”.
There is also domestic violence, such as when a father kills a son who is beating his mother or a mother commits parricide. Let no one doubt that we will fight once morest all violence and that we will not take a single step back in the fight once morest sexist violence
– Alberto Núñez Feijóo (@FeijooGalicia) March 17, 2022
The Galician president has tried to disassociate himself from the pact reached by Alfonso Fernández Mañueco with Vox, as his team understood that the premise of giving “freedom” to the regional presidents in their respective territories was already agreed in the last national executive committee chaired by Pablo Casado . “Sometimes it is better to lose a government than win it through populism”, came to amend Feijóo in the days following the agreement. The Galician asked Mañueco to speed up the negotiations with those of Santiago Abascal, to avoid as much as possible that what was agreed in Castilla y León spilled over his mandate and, above all, set a precedent. The agreement was reached on March 10, three weeks following Feijóo is anointed as the new leader of the PP.
However, and beyond the distribution of councils, the programmatic document signed by PP and Vox in the region has already raised a strong cloud. Among its 32 points and 11 “axes” of Government, some lines dedicated to approving a “law to combat domestic violence” were included, with the aim of “eliminating any type of discrimination in the care of victims of domestic violence” , in line with the speech of Vox that ignores sexist violence as a social scourge.
And from those powders these muds. Since the first agreement with Vox was signed, the PP has played tightrope. And not only in Castilla y León, where the popular defend themselves by claiming that the transfer to Vox will not imply the repeal of the current legislation to protect women from macho abuse. Also in Andalusia, Vox managed to introduce a ‘domestic violence hotline’ in exchange for its support for regional budgets, but it did not displace the hotline once morest gender violence. Now, in the national arena, Feijóo will have to define what relationship he will maintain with Abascal, and if the unprecedented pact in Castilla y León is a precedent or a specific case.
