COMPETING marches have split Spain’s feminist movement for the second year running, with two separate demonstrations hitting both Madrid and Barcelona on International Women’s Day.
The divide — centred on whether trans women should be recognised within feminist spaces — saw opposing groups march simultaneously through both cities, each claiming to represent the true feminist cause.
In Madrid, the Comision 8M set off from Atocha under the banner ‘Feminist Antifascists — We Are More’, embracing trans-inclusive politics alongside demands for better rights for domestic workers, affordable housing and reproductive rights.
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At the same hour, the rival Movimiento Feminista de Madrid marched from Cibeles under the slogan ‘Neither veiled, nor exploited, nor prostituted’ — explicitly opposing the inclusion of trans women and calling for the abolition of prostitution.
The same split played out in Barcelona, where the trans-inclusive Assemblea 8M marched from the Jardinets de Gracia while the breakaway Moviment Feminista de Barcelona set off separately from Placa Catalunya, opposing the trans law and calling for the abolition of pornography.
Despite sharing the same purple banners and the same stated cause, each side blamed the other for a fracture that has left one of Europe’s most powerful feminist movements unable to agree on a single march for two years running.
The division mirrors fractures opening up across feminist movements in Britain and beyond, where the debate over trans inclusion has proved just as explosive.
In the UK, the row has pitted organisations such as Woman’s Place UK against trans-inclusive groups, drawn in figures from JK Rowling to government ministers, and ultimately contributed to the collapse of Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill after Westminster intervened to block it.
In France and Germany, similar arguments have spilled into mainstream politics, with gender identity increasingly weaponised by the far right as a wedge issue against the left.
This year’s marches took place with organisers on both sides pointing to a global picture they described as increasingly hostile to women’s rights.
In the United States, Donald Trump’s return to the White House has brought a wave of executive orders dismantling diversity programmes, restricting abortion funding abroad and rolling back protections for trans people.
In Argentina, President Javier Milei abolished the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity within weeks of taking office.
In Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s government has pushed policies restricting access to abortion. Closer to home, Vox — Spain’s far-right party — has made the dismantling of the country’s feminist legal framework a central plank of its platform.
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