Pedro Sánchez said the PSOE would reform Spain’s Constitution in the next legislature to protect abortion rights. At a packed Granada rally he also accused PP and Vox of driving a political and cultural rollback.
Pedro Sánchez read Federico García Lorca at a packed PSOE pre-campaign rally on 24 October in Granada’s Palace of Congresses, then announced a plan to protect abortion rights in the Constitution. Speaking in the Federico García Lorca hall alongside PSOE deputy leader María Jesús Montero, the Spanish prime minister said his party would pursue the reform in the next legislature if it remained in government after the 29 November general election. It is a pledge, not a change already in force.
The poem was Cantos Nuevos, written in August 1920 in Vega de Zujaira (Granada) and later published in Libro de poemas (1921). Sánchez said Hispanist Ian Gibson had asked him to invoke Lorca in a Friday email. He also referred to La bola negra by Los Javis, whose production was the subject of a report on its set. Sánchez used Lorca to frame what he called an “España de Lorca” that does not fear its culture.
His cultural argument centred on a decision by the Junta de Castilla y León, governed by PP and Vox, to review the “ideology” of artistic proposals before awarding subsidies. Sánchez described that approach as part of a wider reversal and pointed to what he called a long list of cuts in regions governed by the two parties. He contrasted Lorca’s Spain with what he characterized as the PP’s “scissors” and Vox’s “chainsaw.”
María Jesús Montero made a similar charge from the same stage. She said the Junta had prohibited a work by Lorca that week, calling it censorship by a PP-Vox government. She also said Feijóo intended to repeal the democratic memory law while people remained unburied and families continued to wait for the return of their relatives.
The abortion pledge came alongside Sánchez’s response to Feijóo’s recent comments on feminism and whether parental consent should again be discussed for abortions involving 16- and 17-year-olds. Sánchez argued that growing up among women did not itself make someone a feminist. He said men should have no control over women’s bodies. He presented the constitutional promise as a contrast with a possible PP and Vox government led by Feijóo and Santiago Abascal.
The proposal revives an earlier constitutional initiative that did not pass in the previous legislature. The Council of Ministers approved a bill on 7 April to add an abortion guarantee to Article 43 of the Constitution, but its parliamentary process lapsed when the legislature was brought to an early close for the election. The new pledge concerns a future constitutional amendment, rather than an administrative change to the existing abortion statute, and would require sufficient parliamentary support. María Jesús Montero also defended access to euthanasia and the right to vote as citizenship rights. She named abortion separately as an area where she would oppose any rollback. Sánchez said euthanasia would remain “standing as a conquest.”
Sánchez tied the campaign’s political contrast to Javier Milei’s visit to Spain that week. He said Feijóo and Vox leader Santiago Abascal had avoided being photographed with Argentina’s president, and cast their positions as part of the same political camp. He urged voters to turn out on 29 November and invoked the memory of the children and grandchildren of those targeted in the past.
The rally also featured Pedro Fernández, PSOE general secretary in Granada and the party’s lead Senate candidate for the province. Miguel Ríos sat in the front row. Montero said Granada’s history of fascist persecution was a reason to resist what she described as a return to earlier policies. Reporting by El País described the proposed reform as dependent on securing a left-wing parliamentary majority.
