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THE legislative reform was supported by the opposition and was approved with 233 deputies in favour, 59 against and 4 abstentions, and will now go to the Senate, where will almost certainly be approved.
“Today is a sad day, certainly the most difficult day I have experienced in this parliament as a minister,” Equality Minister Irene Montero of the radical left-wing party Podemos told Congress, noting the change to a law that is came to be known as the “Montero Law”.
“Bad Law Enforcement and Sexist Judges”
“This is not progress. it’s a throwback on women’s rights,” continued Montero, who has always maintained that the release of sex offenders was due to misapplication of his law by sexist judges.
Montero accused his cabinet mates, President Pedro Sánchez’s Socialists, of helping him with the votes of the opposition.
The reform approved by deputies this Thursday tightens some previously lowered penalties.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez he came to ask for “forgiveness” by law: “I apologize to the victims, for these undesirable effects,” he said in an interview published on Sunday in El Correo newspaper.
The “only yes is yes”
The law known as “only yes is yes”, because it requires explicit consent in sexual relations, went into effect in October 2022 and in six months it has motivated almost 1,000 reductions in sentences to convicted sex offenders and more than 100 releases, according to court records.
This law on sexual offenses was intended to tighten the previous one by eliminating the “abuse”, milder, and turning all sex crimes into “assaults”.
However, by changing the penalty ranges, lowering some lows and highs, led to revisions and reductions of sentences.
In Spain, new laws can be applied retroactively if it benefits the prisoner, therefore the flurry of requests revision.
“The penal code reform that the PSOE is carrying out today aims reverse the side effects of the law on sexual freedom and also compensate the victims who have been affected by it”, said socialist deputy Andrea Fernández in plenary.
The Socialists had the support of deputies from the first opposition party, the Conservative People’s Party (PP), which he criticized that it “took so long” to fix the mistakesaid his spokesman, Cuca Gamarra.
“We are facing something unprecedented in democracy, facing a government that censors itself”, he continued, calling for “terminations and resignations”.
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Source: Clarin
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