The PSOE accuses Mazón of cutting funding for LGBTI services in Alicante

The Socialist municipal group warns of a 33% reduction in the funding allotted to LGBTI problems in the Valencian Government’s program contract. The Socialists claim that the department responsible for promoting educational, awareness-raising, and anti-hate activities has been reduced from €24,000 to €16,000, which they blame directly on Valencian President Carlos Mazón.

“This cut comes at the same time that Carlos Mazón’s PP, together with Vox, has pushed through legislative changes that focus on the pathologisation and stigmatisation of transgender people, whitewashing conversion therapies and attacking the right to gender identity and expression,” complains the PSOE city council group. For this reason, the Ana Barceló-led party has registered a proposal that will be debated in this Thursday’s plenary session to “reject the cuts and demand that the right cease its attacks and defend the legislation in force in the Valencian Community.”

The institutional statement is part of the commemoration of the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia. It will be debated at a time when, according to the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party), “a direct, ideological, and planned attack is taking place to erase diversity and marginalise the collective.” According to Councillor Emilio Ruiz, the Socialists feel that the assault comes “from the institutions” in the form of “economic cuts, educational censorship, and participation suppression.” In this regard, the councillor has highlighted the unique concern for trans children, stating that “we are talking about real boys and girls, with names, faces, and needs, who are being denied the right to be who they are, and that is inhumane.”

Loss of Rights

The group points out that Carlos Mazón has begun “a strategy to dismantle LGBTI rights by introducing amendments to the Accompanying Law to alter, without any transparency or participation, the comprehensive law on the recognition of the right to gender identity and expression in the Valencian Community.” The PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) condemns this manoeuvre as “it implies the loss of the rights of trans people, especially minors, returning them to stigmatisation and pathologisation.”

In this regard, the Socialist municipal group warns that trans minors are, precisely, “the group in which the highest rates of suicidal thoughts occur, affecting more than 52%,” as well as leading the statistics of victims of sexual discrimination and hate crimes, “since 25.7% have suffered isolation, 23.5% insults, 12% harassment, and 10.3% cyber violence.”

“It’s worth remembering that up to 34 LGBTI associations and organisations from across the Valencian Community have denounced the LGBTIphobia and institutional violence of the Valencian Government, which represents a regressive and authoritarian trend towards dismantling human rights,” Ruiz tells me. All of this was accomplished through “attempts to deactivate participatory spaces for the trans and LGBTI community, in addition to convening advisory bodies during working hours to prevent participation, and excluding associations and organisations from dialogue,” the PSOE councillor adds.