[The Critic] Spain, Feminist Laughingstock

Its far-left government sought to harshen sentences for rapists. It ended up de-jailing some instead.

In the wee hours of 7 July 2016, the #MeToo movement took Spain by storm — a year sooner than Hollywood and with a year’s worth of extra virulence. At noon the previous day, a storm of fireworks launched from Pamplona’s town hall — the txupinazo — had marked the 425th edition of the San Fermines. This annual weeklong celebration is best-known for the running of the bulls famously fictionalised in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1926). Alas for Pamplona, that year’s feast is remembered, well beyond the Navarra region, for an altogether different firestorm, a race to leave behind a different kind of beast. What transpired that early morning ended up placing sexual violence squarely at the centre of Spain’s public debate, radically altering the country’s perception of gender — perhaps irrevocably.

Continue reading the entire piece at The Critic here.