Spanish parliament approves ‘only yes means yes’ consent bill

Authored by theguardian.com and submitted by madrid987
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Spain’s parliament has approved a bill that makes consent a key determinant in sexual assault cases, freeing survivors of having to prove that violence or intimidation was used against them.

The bill, popularly known as “Only yes means yes”, seeks to tackle the nebulous definition of consent in Spanish law. In the absence of a codified definition, the law had long relied on evidence of violence, resistance or intimidation to decide whether a criminal sexual act occurred.

The new bill defines consent as an explicit expression of a person’s will, making it clear that silence or passivity do not equal consent. Non-consensual sex can be considered aggression and subject to prison terms of up to 15 years.

The change was welcomed by the minister for equality, Irene Montero. “From today, Spain is a freer, safer country for all women,” she told parliament. “We are going to swap violence for freedom, we are going to swap fear for desire.”

The bill had long been championed by the Spain’s leftwing coalition government, with only the conservative Popular party and the far-right Vox party voting against it. The draft will now face a vote in the Senate before it can become law.

The draft bill includes other measures such as obliging minors who commit sexual crimes to undergo sex education, gender equality training, and creating a network of 24-hour crisis centres for survivors of sexual assault and their family members.

The legislation traces its roots to the furore caused by a gang-rape case during the San Fermin bull-running festival in Pamplona in 2016.

Initially, the five accused in the case were found guilty of sexual abuse but not rape, as the victim wasn’t deemed to have objected to what was happening. The sentences prompted widespread protests and calls for Spain to join the dozen other countries in Europe that define rape as sex without consent, according to a 2020 analysis by Amnesty International.

green_flash on May 27th, 2022 at 23:49 UTC »

I think this is very important as a symbolic move, but unless the accused has a completely clueless attorney at their side or has talked to someone else about the act, they will claim to have had explicit consent in court, at which point it's a question of who's closer to the truth in their statements which is very hard to assess and rarely conclusive enough for a rape conviction.

Yes, it would have gotten the accused in the wolf pack case convicted which is the main motivation for this law, but that was hardly a typical rape case, with the perps recording the rape and sharing it on social media.

Knoxcarey on May 27th, 2022 at 23:00 UTC »

I think you meant “only sí means yes”, sí?

pfeifits on May 27th, 2022 at 22:55 UTC »

The definition for consent in my state is as follows: "“Consent” for sexual activity means cooperation in act or attitude pursuant to an exercise of free will and with knowledge of the nature of the act. A current or previous relationship shall not be sufficient to constitute consent. Submission under the influence of fear shall not constitute consent." It would seem that under Spanish law, this would not be consent, since consent has to be "express".