Debbie Hayton Debbie Hayton

Spain’s transgender wars are turning nasty

(Getty images)

Lidia Falcón O’Neill is a legendary figure in Spanish politics. Half a century ago, she stood up to Franco as head of a cell in the communist Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia. In 1974, this opposition led to her being brutally tortured:

‘When she fainted they untied her and laid her on the ground. They woke her up with a bucket of water. … She stayed on the ground, wet, for hours, until they took her down to the cell. … On the sixth day, the torturers could not continue with the same sessions. They could no longer hang her on the wall because she was rapidly losing consciousness because of it. So, when she woke up, she kept getting punched and kicked while lying on the ground.’

Now aged 85, Falcón – who is president of the Feminist Party of Spain (PFE) – is back on the frontline of Spanish politics – and her latest detractors are the transgender mob who tolerate no dissent on the discussion of gender. The PFE are vocal in their opposition to new ‘trans laws’ in Spain. That has put them at odds with other left-wing parties, and last year they were thrown out of the United Left.

The Spanish government is something of a leftish cocktail. Headed up by Pedro Sánchez’s mainstream Spanish Socialist Workers party, it relies on support from ‘United We Can’. This is a coalition of parties, including the United Left, which is pursuing new trans laws – legislation that could offer tick box gender changes on demand and allow the medicalisation of transgender-identified children – with enthusiasm. 

Such laws offer little benefit to transsexuals like me, who are already well protected by existing legislation. In Spain, as well as the UK, people who suffer from a diagnosable psychological condition can even change their legal sex, should they wish to do so. But

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