Spain, the great export center of ultra ideology

BarcelonaSpain today has a central role in the international anti-gender agenda for two reasons: on the one hand, local movements such as Opus Dei, Make Yourself Heard, CitizenGo, and Vox preserve the Catholic legacy of Franco's regime and, on the other hand, have been able to export their strategies to Europe, Latin America, and even Africa. In just a few years, the State has become a laboratory for the global ultraconservative offensive that targets everything that points to diversity, whether it be the rights of LGBTIQ+ communities, the abortion one or the battle against sex education. These are the conclusions of a report that has been promoted by theAssociation for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, signed by several researchers who have analyzed cases such as Spain, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Kenya.

They agree that the discourses and strategies of fundamentalist groups against the advancement of human rights are part of a transnational project, very well structured and financed, which has political, religious, and economic arms. In one of the sections, the Journalist specializing in far-right movements, Miquel Ramos He points out that the numerous organizations with Spanish DNA are major international benchmarks and have found followers in other countries that are copying the anti-rights agenda.

Ramos attributes the legacy of Franco's stale Catholicism and the growth of Vox to the fact that Spain is a unique case within the rise of the far right and has become a true hub of the ultra offensive. This is demonstrated by the fact that Madrid has hosted several events by international groups. against abortion and sexual rights. Two decades ago, Hazte Oír opened the floodgates with the battle against the so-called "gender ideology," a concept invented by the Vatican towards the end of the last century and which has served as a lever used by fundamentalist groups to accuse and discredit sexual rights, feminism, and promote LGBTI. There is another vital factor in this equation: it is CitizenGo, the international branch of Hazte Oír, which receives support from part of the ecclesiastical leadership and opaque funding to coordinate digital actions and lobby in fifty countries around the world.

This search, which was presented this Thursday at the LGBTIQ+ Center in Barcelona, ​​​​points out the importance that the arrival of the Vox party within the institutions has had for these ultra movements in legitimizing these ideological battles and placing them in the political and judicial spheres.

Through its Disenso Foundation, Santiago Abascal's party promotes the notion of the Iberosphere, a cultural and political space that seeks to unite Spanish-Portuguese speaking conservative governments and movements in a common cause against "progressive globalism." The strategy of the Spanish ultras combines religious morality, nationalism, and neoliberalism, and places the defense of the "traditional family" as their great cultural and economic crusade. Under the guise of protecting traditional models, freedom, and life, these groups actually violate equality, diversity, and human rights, the report concludes.