The shit in Spain falls mainly in the fan

[Sheilbh]

Back in the day, when same sex marriage was made legal, similar bewildering claims of "dudes will get married to each other for tax reasons" were made, and never materialized, so I think we can take it easy with the argument that "dudes will claim to be women to get unfair advantages" that this law will create.

We had the weird one of Jeremy Irons musing on air if he could marry his son for the inheritance tax benefits - which, obviously wasn't quite right in lots of ways.

I don't think there was any homophobic motivation was Irons. I just think it was an example of why you should never ask actors about politicians (or tax law).

[viper37]

Back in the day, when same sex marriage was made legal, similar bewildering claims of "dudes will get married to each other for tax reasons" were made, and never materialized, so I think we can take it easy with the argument that "dudes will claim to be women to get unfair advantages" that this law will create.

(FWIW, my "go to" friend when I want to take the pulse on women's/gay issues is adamantly against it).

TERF alert? 

but it's different for gays.  All they wanted was piss off the straight.  Once they got their marriage thing legal, most of them went back home to their usual orgies

[celedhring]

(FWIW, my "go to" friend when I want to take the pulse on women's/gay issues is adamantly against it).

TERF alert? 

Yeah, thing is that while she's an activist I don't consider her a radical or unreasonable by any kind of stretch. She's very smart and I always gauge her opinion on women/LGBT+ issues (she's lesbian). So, I was surprised when I learnt she was against the law. Essentially she wants "gender" and "biological sex" to be decoupled and that you can't legally change the latter without biological changes. The problem was then debating which kind of legal prerogatives would go with "gender" (easy to change) and which ones to sex (very hard to change).

[Josquius]

Back in the day, when same sex marriage was made legal, similar bewildering claims of "dudes will get married to each other for tax reasons" were made, and never materialized, so I think we can take it easy with the argument that "dudes will claim to be women to get unfair advantages" that this law will create.

(FWIW, my "go to" friend when I want to take the pulse on women's/gay issues is adamantly against it).

TERF alert? 

It's less people doing it for genuine gain that are a concern and more in the current climate you just know some nutters will do it to prove an oh so clever point.

Maybe we just have a few years of that then it will burn out as nobody cares and they ruin their lives for nothing. But odds are good you will see a bit of it. It does seem very weird to me that I could just apply to change my legal gender without doing anything to actually transition.
The gay marriage tax break comparison breaks down with there being actual laws against marriage just for that purpose no matter the gender of the people involved

Essentially she wants "gender" and "biological sex" to be decoupled and that you can't legally change the latter without biological changes. The problem was then debating which kind of legal prerogatives would go with "gender" (easy to change) and which ones to sex (very hard to change).

This does sound fairly terfy.
She's open to people being able to change their sex?

The bother with this kind of solution is common sense as they may be they involve far more radical changes than the simple solutions thus are unlikely to be passed.
I quite liked a similar solution back when gay marriage was a subject of debate - decouple legal coupling from marriage. Anyone can make a legal couple. A marriage is totally up to churches to decide for themselves.
Just letting gays be married as much as it upset some in the short term was a much more straight forward solution.

[celedhring]

Yeah, the parallel with the whole civil union/marriage thing is there. And as Larchie says ultimately all the doommongering related to gay marriage never came to pass. So I'm perfectly willing to go with the proposed law and see.

[The Larch]

(FWIW, my "go to" friend when I want to take the pulse on women's/gay issues is adamantly against it).

TERF alert? 

Yeah, thing is that while she's an activist I don't consider her a radical or unreasonable by any kind of stretch. She's very smart and I always gauge her opinion on women/LGBT+ issues (she's lesbian). So, I was surprised when I learnt she was against the law. Essentially she wants "gender" and "biological sex" to be decoupled and that you can't legally change the latter without biological changes. The problem was then debating which kind of legal prerogatives would go with "gender" (easy to change) and which ones to sex (very hard to change).

It seems to be a common thing at the moment in many issues related to trans rights that there's opposition from other parts of the LGB spectrum that are against them, as well as the aforementioned TERFs (which migh overlap in the case of some lesbians). For instance I recently read that the largest UK charity dealing with LGBT rights, Stonewall, suffered a split because of their position on trans rights, with a new rival org called LGB alliance being created because of that, which has as part of their objectives specifically being against some of these trans rights. Over here this seems to be conflated with legal protections for women, which these rival groups claim that this new law would weaken because it'd allow men to "become" women, thus making those protections moot.

At the basis of all this ruckus seems to be a bit of a generational thing, as it seems to me that those groups opposed to trans rights are more anchored in older mindsets of the feminist/LGBT movements, while younger generations seem the ones moving the debate forward, but I'm not knowledgeable enough on this to make strong claims. For instance, in the Spanish case, IU recently expelled from its coalition the PFE (Partido Feminista de España), which had been created in the late 70s by Lidia Falcón, as she's a huge TERF that was adamantly opposed to the current law being proposed. Nowadays she can be seen sometimes in the same events denouncing the law with VOX representatives.

[Josquius]

The whole transphobia to protect women thing is so transparently bad faith.
It's like when the far right would call the EU racist because all its members are white. Face palmingly stupid and just trying to get under the skin of their opponents.

[The Larch]

Yeah, the parallel with the whole civil union/marriage thing is there. And as Larchie says ultimately all the doommongering related to gay marriage never came to pass. So I'm perfectly willing to go with the proposed law and see.

Some of the doommongering I'm reading is quite puzzling to me, stuff like "this means the dissappearance of womanhood", and things like that.

The whole transphobia to protect women thing is so transparently bad faith.

Yet that's the way this is going, almost all criticism seems to be directed against trans women, for some reason trans men don't seem to bother as many people.

[The Larch]

A picture from a demonstration against the law by a feminist org:



Some of the signs read:

"RIP Women sports"

"Trans-activism is lesbophobia"

"Chidlhood is to be protected" (Creative translation, it literally says "Childhood does not get touched")

Variations of "TERF are the real feminists" and "Sex is not gender"

[Sheilbh]

It seems to be a common thing at the moment in many issues related to trans rights that there's opposition from other parts of the LGB spectrum that are against them, as well as the aforementioned TERFs (which migh overlap in the case of some lesbians). For instance I recently read that the largest UK charity dealing with LGBT rights, Stonewall, suffered a split because of their position on trans rights, with a new rival org called LGB alliance being created because of that, which has as part of their objectives specifically being against some of these trans rights. Over here this seems to be conflated with legal protections for women, which these rival groups claim that this new law would weaken because it'd allow men to "become" women, thus making those protections moot.

There's a lot going on here

The LGB Alliance is now a registered charity. Their basic position is they're supporting people who define themselves by same-sex attraction (whether lesbian, gay or bi) and say that's under threat because of the "confusion" in their view of biological sex and gender. But they're seen by trans activists and allies as a hate group basically who shouldn't be allowed to register as a charity/non-profit. I also remember a few years ago a group of lesbians blocked the Pride parade by protesting about trans issues.

Similarly Stonewall has placed a big emphasis on trans and non-binary rights in the last few years. They have a workplace award scheme - which organisations pay for - and lots of organisation especially in the public sector are starting to withdraw because it's becoming controversial. In addition - I've worked on a Stonewall submission for a company and it is very time consuming, normally in addition to normal work by people who care about the issue - I think a lot of organisations are just starting to wonder if it's worth the hassle. In my experience as well the marking/awards can be quite arbitrary - they change a lot depending who's looking at your form - and they don't really give any support so you pay lots of money every year to enter this Stonewall scheme, you're judged and have one call to run through your form but through the year they're very non-responsive if you're looking for guidance on x policy or whatever - so I don't know about other organisations, but I know where I was there was a lot of debate about whether it was actually worth engaging with Stonewall because from a corporate perspective you want the shiny badge but you also actually want help improving your policies etc. It is striking that the Equalities and Human Rights Commission which has withdrawn from the Stonewall scheme cited "value for money" because that is a conversation I'd had multiple times about Stonewall schemes.

But I think basically there is a big fight in the UK and it makes Stonewall or other LGBT groups - or LGB groups - controversial so a lot of the corporate side are just backing away because they don't want controversy, they (like UEFA) want a rainbow Twitter handle.

There's also been big court cases here - so recently an employment tribunal found that gender-critical views are protected philosophical or political beliefs. So you can't fire someone for holding those view, but obviously they are not allowed to misgender people or for those views to affect the way they treat or behave towards trans people. Basically the bar in the UK is that philosophical/political beliefs unless they are "not worthy of respect in a democratic society" which basically means Nazism/totalitarianism. So someone can't be fired for disapproving of gay marriage or the gays or Muslims, unless those beliefs impact how they do their job/treat people.

Similarly the High Court has ruled that children under 16 are unlikely to be in a position to give informed consent to puberty blocker and for 16 and 17 year olds the doctors will generally have to apply to the court to proceed with that treatment (with consent). This is currently at the Court of Appeal - and I don't know what way it'll go. It's likely to end up at the Supreme Court (stuff around medicine/medical ethics often does).

There was a point when the main fight was over the proposed update to the Gender Recognition Act, but there's a lot going on in the UK. I think we are a bit of a canary in the mine of where this debate is likely to go in other countries - possibly including the US and Canada where there seems to be a bit more pro-trans rights discourse at the minute. From a purely legal perspective - 90% of what anti-trans rights activists worry about is already the legal position in the UK and has been since 2004 (and 2010 with the Equalities Act). But as I say the fight has moved on from the Gender Recognition Act to far wider issues.

At the basis of all this ruckus seems to be a bit of a generational thing, as it seems to me that those groups opposed to trans rights are more anchored in older mindsets of the feminist/LGBT movements, while younger generations seem the ones moving the debate forward, but I'm not knowledgeable enough on this to make strong claims. For instance, in the Spanish case, IU recently expelled from its coalition the PFE (Partido Feminista de España), which had been created in the late 70s by Lidia Falcón, as she's a huge TERF that was adamantly opposed to the current law being proposed. Nowadays she can be seen sometimes in the same events denouncing the law with VOX representatives.

There's definitely a generational element. I don't think it's just them but I think there is a core of hard-core opponents to trans rights, as the acronym indicates, who come from radical feminism and lesbian activist groups. And as you say they are willing to cooperate with - in this country - people like Laurence Fox and are, seemingly, winning the argument within the Tory party (it was a Tory MP who largely drafted the report on trans rights that led to the update Gender Recognition Act and Theresa May's government was proceeding with it, that seems to have been largely walked back under Johnson). In part I think it's because most (though not all) of the left are still in the trans rights camp while, in the UK, LGB issues aren't controversial with anyone really anymore.

But from where I sit it looks like the fight is expanding and the left is starting to fracture a little more - and I am really struck at the violence of the language so I've seen pro-trans rights activists wearing "Kill x (say JK Rowling)" t-shirts and at the same time you see TERF campaigners use really aggressive language of this being a campaign to "eliminate" lesbians. It seems to me like both sides are unusually aggressive/violent in the way it's expressed which I think is part of why it keeps escalating and spinning out.

[celedhring]

The NYT has a pretty comprehensive write-up on Puigdemont's and his staff's contacts with Russian intelligence. Separatists over here have always dismissed those as "Spanish propaganda" but there's a pretty big trail:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/03/world/europe/spain-catalonia-russia.html?smid=tw-share

BARCELONA, Spain — In the spring of 2019, an emissary of Catalonia's top separatist leader traveled to Moscow in search of a political lifeline.

The independence movement in Catalonia, the semiautonomous region in Spain's northeast, had been largely crushed after a referendum on breaking away two years earlier. The European Union and the United States, which supported Spain's effort to keep the country intact, had rebuffed the separatists' pleas for support.

But in Russia, a door was opening.

In Moscow, the emissary, Josep Lluis Alay, a senior adviser to the self-exiled former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, met with current Russian officials, former intelligence officers and the well-connected grandson of a K.G.B. spymaster. The aim was to secure Russia's help in severing Catalonia from the rest of Spain, according to a European intelligence report, which was reviewed by The New York Times.

Asked about the report's findings, both Mr. Alay and Mr. Puigdemont confirmed the trips to Moscow, which have never been reported, but insisted they were part of regular outreach to foreign officials and journalists. Mr. Alay said any suggestion that he was seeking Russian assistance was "a fantasy story created by Madrid."

For Russia, outreach to the separatists would fit President Vladimir V. Putin's strategy of trying to sow disruption in the West by supporting divisive political movements. In Italy, secret audio recordings revealed a Russian plot to covertly finance the hard-right League party. In Britain, a Times investigation uncovered discussions among right-wing fringe figures about opening bank accounts in Moscow. And in Spain, the Russians have also offered assistance to far-right parties, according to the intelligence report.

Whether Mr. Alay knew it or not, many of the officials he met in Moscow are involved in what has become known as the Kremlin's hybrid war against the West. This is a layered strategy involving propaganda and disinformation, covert financing of disruptive political movements, hacking and leaking information (as happened in the 2016 U.S. presidential election) and "active measures" like assassinations meant to erode the stability of Moscow's adversaries.

It is unclear what help, if any, the Kremlin has provided to the Catalan separatists. But Mr. Alay's trips to Moscow in 2019 were followed quickly by the emergence of a secretive protest group, Tsunami Democratic, which disrupted operations at Barcelona's airport and cut off a major highway linking Spain to northern Europe. A confidential police report by Spain's Guardia Civil, obtained by The Times, found that Mr. Alay was involved in the creation of the protest group.

A secret 700-page transcript of text messages shows the concerted effort made by Mr. Alay and others in Mr. Puigdemont's circle to cultivate ties to Russians with links to the country's intelligence establishment.

"I'm thinking a lot about Russia," Mr. Alay texted Mr. Puigdemont on Aug. 23 last year. "And these days it's all very, very complicated."

Rumors of Russian involvement in Catalonia first emerged soon after Mr. Puigdemont's government held the independence referendum in October 2017. The referendum passed, overwhelmingly, with anti-separatist voters largely boycotting; Spanish authorities declared it illegal and imprisoned those political leaders who did not flee abroad.

Spanish authorities later determined that operatives from a specialized Russian military intelligence group called Unit 29155, which has been linked to attempted coups and assassinations in Europe, had been present in Catalonia around the time of the referendum, but Spain has provided no evidence that they played an active role.

Many Catalan independence leaders have accused the authorities in Madrid of using the specter of Russian interference to tarnish what they described as a grass-roots movement of regular citizens. The referendum was supported by a fragile coalition of three political parties that quickly dissolved over disputes about ideology and strategy. Even as some parties pushed for a negotiated settlement with Madrid, Mr. Puigdemont, a former journalist with a Beatles-like mop of hair, has eschewed compromise.

Asked about the Russian outreach, the current Catalan government under President Pere Aragones distanced itself from Mr. Puigdemont.

"These trips to Moscow were not taken on behalf of the Catalan government and took place without Pere Aragones's knowledge," said Sergi Sabria, Mr. Aragones's spokesman. "These people are not even part of the president's party, which is not aware of the agendas of other parties."

To piece together the contacts with Russia, The Times has drawn on the 10-page European intelligence report, the substance of which was confirmed by two Spanish officials; case files from two separate confidential investigations by magistrates in Barcelona and Madrid, which include the transcript of the texts, but have not yielded any charges related to the Moscow meetings; and interviews with independence politicians and activists in Catalonia, as well as security officials in Spain and abroad.

The June 2020 intelligence report said that Mr. Alay, together with Alexander Dmitrenko, a Russian businessman, sought financial and technical assistance from Russia for the creation of banking, telecommunications and energy sectors separate from Spain. The pair, along with Mr. Puigdemont's lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, also consulted with a leader of a violent Russian criminal syndicate, part of an effort to set up a secret money pipeline to fund their activities, the report said.

The text messages, taken from Mr. Alay's phone when he was briefly arrested in October 2020, help corroborate portions of the intelligence report.

"We're working for The Americans," Mr. Alay said at one point, referring to the FX show about deep-cover K.G.B. officers in the United States.

It was no joke. Two of his primary contacts in Russia, according to the intelligence report, were a husband-and-wife team of intelligence officers whose story helped inspire the series.

'Good News From Moscow'
The Catalan independence movement had been building momentum for a decade but by 2019 had fallen into disarray.

Nine leaders of the movement were in jail and would soon be sentenced to long prison terms for their roles in the referendum. (This summer, all received pardons.) Others had fled Spain, including Mr. Puigdemont, who is living in Belgium and is now a member of the European Parliament, even as he has railed against the "silence of the main European institutions."

The European Union declared the Catalan independence referendum illegal. Russia's position, by contrast, was more equivocal. President Vladimir V. Putin described the Catalan separatist drive as Europe's comeuppance for supporting independence movements in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union.

"There was a time when they welcomed the collapse of a whole series of governments in Europe, not hiding their happiness about this," Mr. Putin said. "We talk about double standards all the time. There you go."

In March 2019, Mr. Alay traveled to Moscow, just weeks after leaders of the Catalan independence movement went on trial. Three months later, Mr. Alay went again.

In Russia, according to the intelligence report, Mr. Alay and Mr. Dmitrenko met with several active foreign intelligence officers, as well as Oleg V. Syromolotov, the former chief of counterintelligence for the Federal Security Service, Russia's domestic intelligence agency, who now oversees counterterrorism as a deputy minister at the Russian foreign ministry.

Mr. Alay denied meeting Mr. Syromolotov and the officers but acknowledged meeting Yevgeny Primakov, the grandson of a famous K.G.B. spymaster, in order to secure an interview with Mr. Puigdemont on an international affairs program he hosted on Kremlin television. Last year, Mr. Primakov was appointed by Mr. Putin to run a Russian cultural agency that, according to European security officials, often serves as a front for intelligence operations.

"Good news from Moscow," Mr. Alay later texted to Mr. Puigdemont, informing him of Mr. Primakov's appointment. In another exchange, Mr. Dmitrenko told Mr. Alay that Mr. Primakov's elevation "puts him in a very good position to activate things between us."

Mr. Alay also confirmed meeting Andrei Bezrukov, a decorated former officer with Russia's foreign intelligence service. For more than a decade, Mr. Bezrukov and his wife, Yelena Vavilova, were deep cover operatives living in the United States using the code names Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley.

It was their story of espionage, arrest and eventual return to Russia in a spy swap that served as a basis for the television series "The Americans." Mr. Alay appears to have become close with the couple. Working with Mr. Dmitrenko, he spent about three months in the fall of 2020 on a Catalan translation of Ms. Vavilova's autobiographical novel "The Woman Who Can Keep Secrets," according to his encrypted correspondence.

Mr. Alay, who is also a college professor and author, said he was invited by Mr. Bezrukov, who now teaches at a Moscow university, to deliver two lectures.

Mr. Alay was accompanied on each of his trips by Mr. Dmitrenko, 33, a Russian businessman who is married to a Catalan woman. Mr. Dmitrenko did not respond to requests for comment. But Spanish authorities have monitored him and in 2019 rejected a citizenship application from him because of his Russian contacts, according to a Spanish Ministry of Justice decision reviewed by The Times.

The decision said Mr. Dmitrenko "receives missions" from Russian intelligence and also "does different jobs" for leaders of Russian organized crime.

A Political Tsunami
A few months after Mr. Alay's trips to Moscow, Catalonia erupted in protests.

A group calling itself Tsunami Democratic occupied the offices of one of Spain's largest banks, closed a main highway between France and Spain for two days and orchestrated the takeover of the Barcelona airport, forcing the cancellation of more than a hundred flights.

The group's origins have remained unclear, but one of the confidential police files stated that Mr. Alay attended a meeting in Geneva, where he and other independence activists finalized plans for Tsunami Democratic's unveiling.

Three days after Tsunami Democratic occupied the Barcelona airport, two Russians flew from Moscow to Barcelona, the Catalan capital, according to flight records obtained by The Times.

One was Sergei Sumin, whom the intelligence report describes as a colonel in Russia's Federal Protective Service, which oversees security for Mr. Putin and is not known for activities abroad.

The other was Artyom Lukoyanov, the adopted son of a top adviser to Mr. Putin, one who was deeply involved in Russia's efforts to support separatists in eastern Ukraine.

According to the intelligence report, Mr. Alay and Mr. Dmitrenko met the two men in Barcelona for a strategy session to discuss the independence movement, though the report offered no other details.

Mr. Alay denied any connection to Tsunami Democratic. He confirmed that he had met with Mr. Sumin and Mr. Lukoyanov at the request of Mr. Dmitrenko, but only to "greet them politely."

Even as the protests faded, Mr. Puigdemont's associates remained busy. His lawyer, Mr. Boye, flew to Moscow in February 2020 to meet Vasily Khristoforov, whom Western law enforcement agencies describe as a senior Russian organized crime figure. The goal, according to the report, was to enlist Mr. Khristoforov to help set up a secret funding channel for the independence movement.

In an interview, Mr. Boye acknowledged meeting in Moscow with Mr. Khristoforov, who is wanted in several countries including Spain on suspicion of financial crimes, but said they only discussed matters relating to Mr. Khristoforov's legal cases.

By late 2020, Mr. Alay's texts reveal an eagerness to keep his Russian contacts happy. In exchanges with Mr. Puigdemont and Mr. Boye, he said they should avoid any public statements that might anger Moscow, especially about the democracy protests that Russia was helping to disperse violently in Belarus.

Mr. Puigdemont did not always head the advice, appearing in Brussels with the Belarusian opposition and tweeting his support for the protesters, prompting Mr. Boye to text Mr. Alay that "we will have to tell the Russians that this was just to mislead."

[celedhring]

Also the state prosecutor now considers that the former King of Spain engaged in illlicit dealings, getting fees for mediating in international business deals and then hiding those funds - which is something that everybody knew already, but now it's the opinion of the state prosecutor.

He can only be prosecuted if there's evidence he kept doing it after he abdicated, though, which the prosecutor is trying to obtain from Switzerland.

[The Larch]

Puigdemont has just been detained by Italian police in Sardinia.

Extradition drama back in the news!

[celedhring]

Reading some of the legal background, it seems likely he can get off easily, since his appeal against the removal of his parliamentary immunity has yet to be ruled upon, and the CJEU let the door open to granting it back temporarily if he was detained. I don't know why the Spanish Supreme Court is risking another setback instead of waiting until all the appeals are resolved.

But I'm no lawyer.

[Iormlund]

This stinks of deliberate move on Puchi's part.

If he's extradited and sentenced just in time for PP & Vox to claim the next government it could backfire spectacularly, though.