Talk about prostitutes threatens the predominance of the female vote in the PSOE.

BarcelonaPedro Sánchez's insistence these days on expressing his rejection and disgust with the conversations between José Luis Ábalos and Koldo García, in which they discuss hiring prostitutes, is no coincidence. "I want you to know that the leaked audio recordings disgust us. The lack of exemplary conduct, the vulgarity, and the machismo are incompatible with the values of this organization," he said on Monday. Since Sánchez took office, he has championed feminism. It is no coincidence that his first government, after winning the vote of no confidence against Mariano Rajoy, was the first in Spanish history to have a majority of women. Specifically, it had 11 women and only 6 men, and his first vice president was always a woman.

Since Sánchez became leader of the PSOE, he has also promoted a shift toward the abolition of prostitution, abandoning the classic pro-rights theses of the left, which are still prominent in places like Catalonia. This was decided at the 2021 party congress, where for the first time the PSOE declared itself "in favor of abolishing prostitution." At last year's congress, an amendment from feminist sectors was approved to expel members convicted of engaging in prostitution from the organization, and the Q+ reference to the LGBTI community was eliminated, thus aligning itself with the feminist movement that criticizes "the erasure of women" that gender self-determination entails. The PSOE, in fact, has already tried unsuccessfully to bring abolitionist laws to Congress on several occasions, and now the Minister of Equality, Ana Redondo, has announced a new project for September.

The fact is that for the PSOE, the electoral damage from the prostitution audio recordings could even exceed that caused by corruption. Why? Because the Socialists are the Spanish party with the greatest preponderance of female voters, dating back to the Zapatero era. If we look at the CIS post-election survey for the July 2023 elections, we see that the PSOE is the party with the highest percentage of female voters, 56.1%, compared to 43.9% of men. That's a difference of more than 12 points. No other party has such a high female vote differential: in the PP it's only 1.6 points (50.8% women and 49.2% men), in Sumar it's 3.6 points (51.8% versus 48.2%). At the other extreme, Vox is a party with a clear male voter predominance, with a 32-point differential in favor of men (66% versus 34%). In the case of Junts and ERC, these are parties with a larger male vote, but not that far behind.

These data clearly show that the female vote has been key to Pedro Sánchez's electoral success, and this explains his and his strategists' concern. It also explains the indignation among the feminist sectors of the PSOE, who had placed their trust in Sánchez and his team.

However, prostitution scandals have also affected the PP. The head of the Gürtel scandal, Francisco Correa, offered "girl services" to PP politicians as part of his scheme. In the ruling on the case of the looting of Emarsa, the wastewater treatment plant in Valencia, PP officials paid prostitutes they tried to pass off as "translators" with public company money. The same thing happened in Mallorca with the so-called Rasputin case, which popularized the expression "this is the end of the stick," uttered by the nationalist politician Pere Sampol.

In this case, however, what has done the most damage has been the hypocrisy. José Luis Ábalos testified in 2021 on the program Everything is a lie Risto Mejide's claim that he was "against the sexual exploitation of women. It disgusts me that someone has no other recourse than to surrender to a relationship that they normally wouldn't enter into. Fortunately, I haven't had to resort to this." "You like Ariadna more," Koldo García tells him in one of the audio recordings recorded after an event during the April 2019 general election campaign in Castellón. "I don't know, Carlota has a crazy amount of relationships," Ábalos replies. "Well, whoever you want," García concludes.

This Thursday, when he was asked by the SER network about the audio recordings, he went on a rant and simply replied that "no one can stand analysis of their private life." In other words, it was all a lie.