Lucía Sobral first figured out that she was trans because of Twitter. Growing up, the Gran Canaria native struggled to interact with boys and feared taking off her shirt, but it was not until she discovered other trans people online that she was able to understand herself. At 18, she transitioned, a process supported by her family and friends, who started calling her Lucía.

“It was very respectful and fantastic,” Sobral, now a 20-year-old student of Maths and Physics at Universidad Complutense in Madrid, told me in an interview in Spanish. “I am happier this way.”

On March 2, Sobral became one of the first Spaniards to change her legally registered gender after the passage of the country’s new LGBTI Law, which de facto recognized people’s right to gender self-determination. The legislation abolished the need to undergo two years of hormone treatment and exhibit a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria in order to legally transition.

The law was more than two years in the making and caused heated conflict between the governing center-left Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and its progressive coalition partner Unidas Podemos (“United We Can”). For Sobral, the drawn-out fight over the bill was “agonizing,” especially after prominent Socialist figures like former equality minister Carmen Calvo openly spoke against the law. Once Congress approved it in February, Sobral felt relieved and knew she wanted to alter her legal gender identity as soon as possible. “It was a long time of tug-of-war,” she said.

Around 9 am on Thursday, March 2, Sobral was waiting in line at Madrid’s Civil Registry with her proof of residency and birth certificate, ready to fill in the documents that would correct her ID. The law requires a waiting period of up to three months to ratify the decision, and Sobral was told to come back on May 18, when she was finally able to have her gender identity officially validated. “It is important that [the law] passed because it settles the issue of how trans people have to be treated,” Sobral said. “Had it not been approved, it would have been dramatic because it would have spread the message that trans rights are disposable.”

But Sobral and many other queer Spaniards are now waiting with bated breath to see whether the progress made under the current government is about to be rolled back.

After a resounding loss in the local and regional elections last May, Sánchez called a snap election for this Sunday, July 23, trying to cut short the right’s political momentum. For the center-right Popular Party (PP) and far-right Vox, the LGBTI Law became an easy way to score political gains at the expense of the trans community. Alberto Núñez-Feijoo, PP’s president, recently said that as a result of this measure, “it is much easier to legally change one’s gender than to get the driver’s license,” and has promised to abolish the law in its current form. Santiago Abascal, leader of Vox, depicted it as a “threat to women and children.”

A sense of fear looms over many members of the Spanish LGTBQI community. Last year, hate crimes related to sexual orientation and gender identity increased by almost 70 percent, and the homophobic group murder of Samuel Luiz, a 24-year nurse, in the city of A Coruña two years ago shocked the entire country. With the right-wing parties currently leading in the polls, many worry that this weekend’s elections could not only undo the gains that queer Spaniards—especially trans people—have made in recent years but set off a new wave of social and political repression. The stakes, in other words, are very, very high.

Spain’s previous national trans law was enacted in 2007, during the Socialist premiership of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. The country’s comunidades autónomas (state governments) are in charge of managing health and educational systems, so after its approval in Congress, LGBTQI+ organizations focused on working to implement protection of trans rights at the state and local level, said Uge Sangil, president of the State Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Trans, Bisexuals, Intersexuals, and more (FELGTBI+), a leading queer rights group. (FELBGTI+ has advocated a vote for left parties in the upcoming elections.) As a result of activists’ efforts, several state governments, including those of Canarias and Catalonia, implemented trans-affirming legislation in the 15 years following the approval of the 2007 law.

At the national level, queer activists and NGOs were advocating for the depathologization of trans people. To ensure full recognition of the community’s human rights, they said, the central government had to eliminate the psychological and psychiatric treatment needed for a legal gender change—a goal that was finally achieved in this year’s LGBTI Law. “The great challenge we faced [was] achieving gender self-determination without tutelage, without doctors involved,” Sangil said in a phone interview in Spanish.

Self-determination, however, was not the only cause the community had to fight for. Activists like Mar Cambrollé, president of the Federation Trans Platform (Federación Plataforma Trans) and a participant in the first Spanish Pride March of 1977, also emphasize how the current LGBTI Law has advanced the protection of other rights. Cambrollé, who was involved in drafting the new law, highlighted the banning of conversion therapies and unnecessary surgeries on intersex children under the age of 12 as two of its most progressive protections. “It is a comprehensive and cross-cutting legislation, not just a name-changing measure,” Cambrollé said in an interview. “That is why this law serves as a model for other countries.”

Internationally, Spain’s LGBTI Law is at the forefront of human rights legislation, said Curro Peña, PhD, a consultant in human rights who works with organizations like the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA.) Revoking mandatory hormone treatment to change the legal gender aligns with international standards set by judicial bodies like the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and United Nations entities such as the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

But others have pushed their legislation even further, Peña said. Spain still does not formally recognize nonbinary people and gender-neutral legal markers, unlike countries like Iceland and Malta. According to sources from the Equality Ministry, led by Unidas Podemos minister Irene Montero, the draft bill included the option to leave the legal gender marker blank, but the Socialist Party opposed the idea. “Spain has approved a law that can be described as progressive, but it is not the most forward-thinking,” said Peña. “There has been a cautious approach, especially from a part of the government.”