Spain on Thursday toughened its laws against sexual violence by introducing an explicit consent requirement, a minority measure in Europe and a leftist government response to a gang rape that outraged the country.
The text had been approved by the Lower House of Parliament in the first reading in May, but the Senate had introduced a modification in July that forced a new vote for the deputies.
Reforming the Penal Code, it makes “consent” a central element to be “freely expressed by acts that (…) clearly express the will of the person.”
“Our country finally establishes by law that consent must be central in our sexual relations. Women will no longer have to prove that there was violence or intimidation during an assault for it to be recognized as a sexual assault,” said the Equality Minister. Irene Montero, from the radical left Podemos party, a minority ally of the Socialists in government.
A gang rape outraged the country
Until now, the notion of violence or intimidation was necessary to qualify a violation. This issue had been at the center of the so-called “La Meute” affair, the gang rape in 2016 of an 18-year-old girl during the San Fermín festivities in Pamplona by five men who had filmed their acts and bragged about a messaging group.
They were sentenced in 2018 to nine years in prison, not for rape, but for “sexual abuse”. Defined by the absence of violence or intimidation, sexual abuse is a misdemeanor, not a felony, and therefore carries lesser penalties. This situation disappears with the new law.
At the time of the trial, the sentence had taken the streets of tens of thousands of women throughout Spain, shouting “I believe you, my sister”, to demand a tightening of the Penal Code. Given these indignant reactions, the Spanish Supreme Court had finally reclassified the events in June 2019 as “rape in a meeting” and increased the sentences to 15 years in prison.
A concept that remains minority
In Europe, the notion of explicit consent is still in the minority. According to a study by Amnesty International at the end of 2020, 12 European countries out of the 31 analyzed by the NGO then defined rape from the absence of consent, beyond coercion or vulnerability.
Among these countries, Germany strengthened its legislation in 2017 to make lack of consent the sole criterion for defining rape. In France, a law aimed at protecting minors from sexual crimes and offenses and incest last year set the threshold of consent at 15 and 18 in the case of incest.
Spain is a benchmark in the field of the fight against sexual violence since a pioneering law in 2004 that prominently introduced the gender difference as an aggravating factor of violence.
Source: BFM TV
