The PP and Vox parties have banned burkas on EMT buses and demanded that the ban be implemented in municipal buildings.

PalmThe Palma City Council plenary session approved a motion this Thursday, with votes in favor from the People's Party (PP) and Vox, calling on the governing team to prohibit women who cover their faces with burkas, niqabs, or equivalent garments from entering municipal buildings. The initiative, championed by Santiago Abascal's party, was modified through a PP amendment to extend the ban to buses operated by the Municipal Transport Company (EMT). The text was approved in its entirety. In general terms, the proposal urges the City Council to require anyone entering a municipal building to do so with their face uncovered "for reasons of security and identity verification." The document defines "complete face covering" as that produced by garments or clothing that totally or substantially prevent facial identification.

Although the text cites "the niqab, the burka, or other similar garments with an equivalent effect," by way of example only, both the Vox and PP representatives focused their remarks on these items.

The motion also calls for the municipal legal services to be tasked with drafting and approving internal regulations or rules for the use of municipal facilities that develop this regulation, guaranteeing its publicity, clarity, and correct application.

Vox councilwoman Jero Mayans justified the measure by citing the need to identify faces to carry out certain procedures, something that, she said, "garments such as the full-face veil, the niqab, and the burka prevent." Furthermore, she linked these garments to the transformation of city neighborhoods into "hostile places," where "no trace of Spain remains" because "Islamic law prevails."

City Council spokesperson Mercedes Celeste expressed the PP's full support for the proposal and asserted that the objective of what she called "clothing or even imprisonment" is none other than "to conceal identity, to erase and dehumanize women." "In our municipal offices, we want women to have an identity, to be someone and not something," she emphasized.

On the left, Unides Podem councilwoman Lucía Muñoz accused the PP and Vox of "instrumentalizing women's rights to justify racist rhetoric and anti-immigration policies." "They want the City Council to be able to decide how women dress in its offices. If a woman is forced to wear an item of clothing, it's oppression, but if the State forces her to remove it, that's also oppression," she maintained.

The councilor for MÁS in Palma, Miquel Àngel Contreras, criticized what he called a "political propaganda operation" promoted by Vox with the intention of "generating fear where there is no real problem."

For his part, the spokesperson for the PSOE, Xisco Ducrós, considered that, although items like the burka "affect the dignity and rights of women," this is not the intention of the measure proposed by Vox. "They don't offer proposals to get these women out of this situation, but rather condemn them to being unable to carry out procedures, to greater inequality," he reproached.