Queer and trans Spaniards fear that a new right-wing government would roll back historic gains and usher in a wave of repression.
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
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For people like Txus García, a 48-year-old trans nonbinary man and LGBTQI+ activist, the lack of recognition of nonbinary gender identities limits human diversity, subjecting it to a system that excludes many gender-nonconforming individuals. “They are forcing me to binarize, to remain in the fold of being either A or B,” García told me. “If I want to…be perceived as a man, I have to dress and behave in a certain way: That is terrible and harmful.” According to a 2022 report by the Spanish Ministry of Equality, 80 percent of nonbinary people have suffered discrimination in family settings and 51 percent in sexual-affective relationships, and the lack of governmental recognition further invisibilizes their cause.
“Enbies” are not the only ones excluded from the LGBTI Law. Trans children under 12 are excluded from its protections. (Children from 12 to 14 can change their legal gender with court approval, and 14-to-16-year-olds can do so with parental consent; anyone over 16 can change their legal gender freely.) Alicia Arruti, a 16-year-old student and trans activist, was one of the first minors to legally change her gender under the new legislation, and despite being “euphoric” when she heard about the law’s approval, she criticizes the lack of protection for trans minors. Before the approval of the law, courts authorized some minors under 12, such as a child named Alejandro, to legally change their gender, an affirming approach cut short in February. “They decided that to avoid further controversies with the law but, in the end, it dismisses people under 12 years old,” Arruti said in a video interview in Galician.
Parents of trans children like Encarni Bonilla, who heads Chrysallis, an association of trans children and youth families, echo Arruti’s criticism. “Leaving out children under 12 has been a concern,” Bonilla said. “Until now, there have been more or less flexible criteria depending on the autonomous communities.”
Despite its shortcomings, though, Spain’s LGBTI Law has deeply changed the lives of many trans people. That is why there is so much concern about the potential triumph of the right in Sunday’s elections.
When Bruno Campos, a 22-year-old trans photographer, found out that Congress had approved it, he started running around his apartment in Torremolinos, Andalucía, screaming with joy. The upcoming election terrifies him.
“I had never seen such a tangible possibility that my rights could be wiped away with the stroke of a pen,” said Campos in a video interview in Spanish. “It is a reality already present in other countries. Who can assure me that on July 23 the far right will not win and two months later I will not have any rights in this country?”
The LGBTI law played a major role in the election campaign. In its 2023 platform, PP rejected “the most extreme positions on transsexuality,” and Núñez-Feijoo said he will abolish the current LGBTI Law if elected. Conservatives have repeatedly appealed several articles of the legislation before the Constitutional Court. Vox has also vowed to abolish the LGBTI Law in its latest platform, depicting gender self-determination as a “new fictional right” that “blurs the concepts of man and woman.” During the only broadcasted debate featuring several political groups present in Congress, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, congressional speaker of Vox, said that Spaniards are worried that “maths have been replaced by gender ideology” and that, instead of dealing with the challenges faced by baby boomers’ retirement, the government “is concerned about the trans law.”
The left has underscored the threats a PP-Vox coalition government would pose for the queer community. In the speakers’ debate, Patxi López, PSOE’s congressional speaker, denounced the pacts of a “far-right alliance” that has already banned the screening of movies like Lightyear (which featured a kiss between two women) from a local summer festival in Cantabria. Additionally, during a debate in the Senate, Sánchez told Núñez-Feijoo that he “never imagined that recognizing rights of minorities like the trans community” would upset anyone; and in the only campaign debate between the two leaders, Sánchez said that “all the laws related to women and the LGBTI collective that is being threatened by Vox and their governments with PP have the imprint of PSOE.” Núñez-Feijoo responded that when he was president of Galicia, he “passed a law for the LGBTI collective in 2014,” and later added, “you talk about LGBTI flags, I have all the respect for those flags, but I also respect the flag of Spain, and you govern with parties that do not hang the Spanish flag in the institutions.”
Sumar (“Add Up”), the political successor of Unidas Podemos, wants to expand the protections of the current LGBTI law, and Yolanda Díaz, its leader, defended her party’s project, saying that the only thing Núñez-Feijoo has done is “include radicals in his governments, [those who] trample on women’s and LGBTI’s rights.” In a debate on equality policies organized this week, María de la Cabeza Ruiz Solás, a Vox congresswoman, called Elizabeth Duval, Sumar’s spokeswoman for feminism and LGBTI rights and a trans woman, “chronically ill” for the hormone treatment she receives, although she later clarified that being trans “is not an illness. The problem is that you have to take medication, which is negative for your health.” Andrea Fernández, PSOE’s equality spokeswoman, depicted Ruiz Solás’s comments as “Dante-esque,” and as a “violent discourse with the complicit tolerance of PP.”
Whoever wins on Sunday, queer Spaniards will have a fight on their hands. If Sánchez is returned to power, they will have to push his government to expand the protections of the existing LGBTI law. If the right takes over, they will have to defend the rights they have already won. Regardless of the outcome of the election, LGBTQI+ organizations, especially local ones like ALAS A Coruña, will continue to lead the way in the protection of the trans community, offering support and community for those in need of a chosen family. “We need to maintain the work we have been doing so far: educating, training, being on the streets, trying to reach all populations, traveling throughout the province, and providing quality services to our community,” said Ana G. Fernández, president of ALAS A Coruña.
And the fight against transphobia does not end at the election booth. “As a collective, country and society, I believe we should aspire to continue working on changing mindsets, and for those different perspectives to materialize in laws that protect the rights of trans people,” said Campos. “I am a fairly positive person.”