► PSOE prioritizes LGBTI rights, church-state separation, death with dignity ►
Spain’s Socialist party (PSOE) has released a working paper on a series of social rights it wants to see enshrined in Spain’s Constitution, pending much-anticipated debate that will take place in the Congress of Deputies in the new year aimed at reforming the country’s 39-year-old charter, enacted at the onset of Spain’s “Democratic Transition” in 1978.
Public discussion of Constitutional reform in Spain has so far focused largely on territorial reforms sparked by the political crisis in Catalonia, proposed in principle by the Socialists and agreed to by the governing conservative Partido Popular (PP) and centre-right Ciudadanos parties. But, the document published by the PSOE on Tuesday leaves the territorial question aside and focuses on social rights the Socialists say are fundamental to a modern society and should be enshrined in a reformed Constitution.
Entitled Nuevos derechos para un nuevo pacto constitucional (New Rights for a New Constitutional Pact), one of the Constitutional amendments proposed by the PSOE would incorporate the right to same-sex marriage, recognized in Spain since 2005 in a law passed during the Socialist administration of then-President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and upheld as constitutional by Spain’s Tribuna Constitucional (Constitutional Court) in 2012.
The Socialists are also proposing a Constitutional guarantee of a clear separation of the Spanish government and the Catholic church, ensuring lay education and equal treatment of individuals regardless of their religious creed. Other key social rights among the Socialists’ proposals are the right to the protection of privacy, honour and self-image, including the ability to have personal information removed from the Internet; the strengthening of the rights of gender equality, affordable housing and collective bargaining; and elevation to the constitutional level of rights linked to protection of the environment.
► Read More in Spanish at El Periódico, RTVE Noticias and El País …
► Download PDF in Spanish with PSOE Constitutional reform proposals …
