The burqa and the politics of fear gain ground in Parliament

Palma“We want Spain to continue being Spain, that our streets be Spain’s. Our society is built on the pillars of Greco-Roman culture and Christian tradition”. The person responsible for these words is Vox spokesperson, Manuela Cañadas. A radical far-right politician who attacks the feminist lobby, denies gender violence – if the male individual is Spanish – and who is concerned about women’s rights when it comes to the presence of the burqa and niqab in the streets of the Balearic Islands, which is nil. Vox presented a bill to ban these garments and had the support of the PP, which noted that it has advocated for years for the prohibition of full veils, so that no one doubts their consistency and thinks that the popular party is acting out of political opportunism.

The left voted against this initiative, which does not mean they are in favor of the burqa and niqab. “In the explanatory statement of this bill, it is clear that women matter very little. What matters is immigration and Islam. The far-right has an obsessive idea of a supposed cultural threat”, said PSIB deputy Teresa Suàrez during the plenary session of Parliament last Tuesday, and she stressed that this is no obstacle for socialists to consider the burqa as “a sexist element that subjugates women”. Suárez criticized “the need to find an enemy” by Vox. “A group becomes a collective threat and nuances disappear, reality is blurred to search for a common enemy”, she said. In short, Vox’s operation with the burqa is “deceptive”, according to the socialist.

MÉS per Mallorca representative Marta Carrió followed the same line as Suárez. “The core of this initiative is immigration, Islam, and the construction of a narrative of fear. It does not start by talking about male violence, but about Western civilization and a threat to our values. Women do not appear as subjects of rights, but as an excuse for an Islamophobic discourse”, she criticized, in addition to describing the burqa and niqab as “expressions of patriarchy”.

“Patriarchy is not an exclusive heritage of Islam. We also find it in fundamentalist Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism, and on the street,” she added. Carrió accused the far-right of presenting the debate “as if male chauvinism had a single responsible community, with the cynicism of those who deny it when we talk about gender violence.” According to the MÉS per Mallorca deputy, what happened on Tuesday in Parliament can be summarized as follows: “Vox resorts to feminism to fuel racism, and the PP supports it.”

The Popular Party called upon their deputy for thorny issues, Cristina Gil, who must be acknowledged as having the skill to walk the tightrope separating the right from the far-right. “Gentlemen of the left, with the cultural relativism you uphold, you justify the veil, which is a symbol of oppression and submission,” she criticized, in addition to entering into more pragmatic matters, because the burqa and niqab “prevent facial identification.” “If you don't vote yes, you are only paying lip service to feminism,” she warned. But this warning was not reflected in the voting result. Gil also clarified that the bill “does not prohibit any religion,” even though no one had been mistaken.

With this scenario, Manuela Cañadas opted to get angry, a usual behavior for the far-right deputy that provokes smiles from a good part of the Chamber's deputies. “They call themselves feminists. They remain silent if the one who savagely violates a girl is a migrant. In their eagerness to perpetuate themselves in power through the electoral roll, they bring other cultures,” she began, with a display of what is a totum revolutum. She also accused the left of whitewashing pedophilia, of eliminating the presumption of innocence for men, of not voting yes to the freedom of Muslim women, of lying... And then she made a declaration of principles by shouting: “We deny gender violence because violence has no gender!”.

Groundhog Day

On the other hand, politicians continue to revolve around the same problems, as if they were spinning tops and without any solutions in sight. The three pillars of political struggle have been, are, and will be housing, saturation, and mobility, and nothing suggests that anything, however small, can be fixed in the short term. However, it should be noted that the Minister of Housing, Territory and Mobility, José Luis Mateo, was able to speak in Parliament without using one of his usual linguistic crutches: the verb ‘to work’, in all its conjugations. Surely some listeners of the debate will thank him for it.

We must also congratulate the mayor of Palma, Jaime Martínez, who has finally managed to leave dozens of people on the street with nothing to their name on a day he described as "historic". For some legislatures now, there have been exhaustingly historic events, however insignificant they may seem to the general public. The people being paraded outside the only roof they can afford did not look like they were living a very historic moment, but rather one of breakdown, sadness, and not knowing what will happen next. As for the prefabricated houses that have been placed in the sun for these people, it could be recommended to whoever had the brilliant idea to spend a little while there at noon, and they will see how 'cool' they are.