• PSOE’s Ángeles Álvarez slams ongoing PP cuts to fight against gender violence
• Socialist Deputy says no funding earmarked for all-party ‘Pacto’ in 2017 budget
Ángeles Álvarez, the Socialist party (PSOE) spokeswoman on equality issues in Spain’s national Congress of Deputies, on Wednesday lashed out against what she said were insufficient, unjustified and disappointing levels of funding earmarked for programs related to gender equality and protection of women against gender violence in the proposed 2017 budget submitted by the conservative Partido Popular (PP) government of Spanish president Mariano Rajoy.
Speaking to reporters in the halls of the Congress, Álvarez said that despite the PP’s stated commitment to moving forward with the all-party National Pact Against Gender Violence (Pacto de Estado Contra la Violencia de Genero), the 2017 budget proposal contains no budget line item for the prevention of violence against women nor any specific line-item funding for implementation of the Pacto itself, a plan for which is currently being discussed in Congress and is supposed to be put into operation by October.
The last budget of the previous Socialist government of Spain in 2011 allocated more than 30 million euros to the fight against gender violence, Álvarez noted. Since then, the annual funding for gender-violence prevention and assistance programs under the PP government has seen a reduction of 8.68 percent, she said, noting that the current 2017 budget proposal still falls short of the 2011 Socialist government commitment, allocating just 27 million euros to fight gender violence this year.
► Read More in Spanish at Público and Europa Press …
