The Right and the burqa trap for the Left, from Lisbon to Madrid

Lisbon. The script plays out in exactly the same way: a more or less conservative or radical right-wing party seizes upon an issue dear to the progressive left (women’s freedom), proposes a law on the burqa and throws that left into disarray – a left which, by contrast, seems increasingly preoccupied with Sidney Sweeney’s low-cut tops. Now the scenario is playing out in Italy, but other countries in Mediterranean Europe have been through this before. It happened in Portugal, where the far-right Chega party proposed a law to ban the burqa in public spaces; the party of the conservative Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, took the bill, toned down its more explicitly anti-Islamic rhetoric, emphasised the security-related reasons rather than arbitrary religious persecution, and finally the bill became law with the votes of the governing coalition, Chega and the liberals. The left, in all its forms – from the Socialists to the Communists – opposed the measure. In Portugal, the ‘burqa law’ comes into force tomorrow.

In Spain, the right-wing initiative has been less successful in practice, but they have taken comfort in the moral victory of showing themselves to be on the side of women and putting the left on the back foot – the left being usually incapable of taking action when it comes to legislating on issues that might upset minorities and that hard-core base of voters who care deeply about defending them, even when doing so means calling fundamental principles into question. Last February, a bill banning the burqa and niqab – proposed by the far-right Vox party and backed by the People’s Party – was tabled in Parliament. But in the Congress of Deputies, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez briefly regained the unity of the diverse political bloc that had voted in favour of his government in 2023. And so the bill was rejected by the Socialists, the radical left and the Catalan conservatives of Junts.

The Spanish People’s Party’s parliamentary spokesperson, Ester Muñoz, delivered a rousing speech that drew applause even from the austere Vox MPs, who are not in the habit of giving standing ovations to the right and (much less so) to the left. Muñoz described that ban as a “moral principle that defines us as a nation”, before asking rhetorically, “since when has the Left sold out” and decided to abandon certain women to a fate of being imprisoned in their own garments? In that debate, the Left could not help but stammer. Their “we are against the burqa but…” sounded like the ultimate reversal of the “I’m not racist but…” line, which the left usually throws in the face of the right. The spokesperson for the Socialist MPs, Patxi López, got himself tangled up in a speech condemning the burqa and niqab – explicitly described as “sexist constraints” – only to go on to say, in the strictest inclusive language, that “for some men and some women” they continued to represent the “religious freedom” guaranteed by the Constitution. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister Yolanda Díaz, of Sumar, denounced the violently Islamophobic and xenophobic language of the bill, asserting that it was unconstitutional.

Could it not have been rewritten, as the Portuguese conservatives had done? The MPs from Junts, the Catalan separatists, took it upon themselves to do so. There are seven of them, and the Vox bill had failed by precisely seven votes. Following the February vote, Junts tabled another bill against the burqa, so as not to leave certain issues to the far right. Even the Socialists agreed that the matter could be discussed again. However, the anti-burqa bill, rewritten by the Catalan separatists in the style of the Portuguese one – focusing more on public safety than on religious persecution – might have been acceptable had Junts not slipped in, within the same bill, the transfer of security powers to Catalonia. Last April, the bill secured only the seven votes of those who had drafted it. The same pattern is repeating itself in Italy, with the proposal to ban the burqa put forward by Giorgia Meloni from the stage at Fenix, the Gioventù Nazionale festival. Will the Italian left manage to avoid falling into this trap?