MADRID, 30 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The PSOE spokesman in Congress, Patxi López, has distanced himself this Wednesday from the accusation of “promoting the culture of rape” that the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, has launched at the PP and has warned it that it should not ” play” with this type of statements since she herself has already experienced this “verbal aggressiveness”.
“They have not seemed like the best words to me after all that we have experienced in this Congress, and precisely she who has experienced that verbal aggressiveness should not play with this,” he said in statements to the media in the halls of Congress.
Montero has charged against the PP by accusing them of “promoting the culture of rape that calls into question the credibility of the victims”, giving as an example the campaigns against gender violence that the ‘popular’ governments have launched in autonomous communities such as Galicia or the Community of Madrid.
The scuffle took place in the midst of a debate over the consequences of the application of the law for the comprehensive guarantee of sexual freedom, known as the ‘only yes is yes’ law, which to date has led to the downward revision of 43 sentences and 10 releases of those convicted of sexual crimes.
These words by Montero have provoked protests from the Popular Group, which has halted the session for almost two minutes in which they have asked the minister to retract. Likewise, the parliamentary spokesperson of the PP Cuca Gamarra has indicated that it is “highly offensive” that the minister addresses the PP in these terms.
In addition, the president of the Lower House, Meritxell Batet, has reproached Montero that the expressions used in his speech are not “adequate in parliamentary terms addressed to a parliamentary group”, in a situation, that the presidency of the Lower House rebuke a representative of the Government, which is exceptional.
Along the same lines as that maintained by Patxi López, sources from the PSOE leadership point out that they do not support Montero’s words but recall that the minister has been subjected to insults by the ‘popular’.
In this way they refer to the intervention of the PP deputy, Víctor Píriz, who on November 22 in the first stages of the debate on the General State Budgets, when he called Montero “useless and arrogant”.
The next day the tension skyrocketed in Congress after the Vox deputy Carla Toscano stated from the rostrum that the only merit of the Minister of Equality is “having studied in depth” Pablo Iglesias, her partner and founder of Podemos.
