The Minister of Culture of Spain, Ernest Urtasun, will go to the demonstration of pride in Budapest, scheduled for June 28. “Today, I have expressed my support for Hungary activists in the face of Budapest’s pride. We will be there,” he published Thursday in his Bluesky Social Network account. Urtasun, to add, the announcement has confirmed this Friday. The concentration you mention is not yet summoned. Nor, assured its realization: the Hungarian ultraconservative government of Viktor Orbán
The Hungarian Parliament, on March 18 of this year, legalized the possibility of restricting freedom of meeting based on a rule of supposed “childhood protection”, approved in 2021 and that prohibits public representation before minors of “the divergence of gender identity corresponding to the sex of birth, the change of sex or homosexuality.” An argument that they want to apply to veto the pride.
After the approval of the Hungarian Law, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, asked Europe not to tolerate the prohibition of pride. “Europe should not allow it,” he wrote on social networks in Spanish and in English. The prohibition to the demonstration has not yet been effective, as it would apply after the conveners ask for permission to organize the act. In April, the European Parliament warned that the Hungarian veto, as the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) had already remembered, threatens the rights to “non -discrimination, freedom of expression and freedom of meeting.”
“We are living an unprecedented attack on human rights. And the most worrying thing is that it is happening in the heart of Europe,” he regrets that he is going to go to Budapest on June 28. “Spain must play a fundamental role in defense of the rights of the group,” says the LGTBI+ secretary in the PSOE federal executive.
Gutierrez has held conversations with several Europarliamentarians to join the delegation. And asks “a unanimous and massive response to this new outrage to the LGTBIQ+ collective by Orbán”: “We will fill the streets of Budapest as a sign of solidarity with the country LGTBIQ+ of the country and raise the voice to request freedom, justice and dignity, and that human rights are respected.”
For its part, the Netherlands Congress has requested that Dutch deputies want to show that the norm approved by the Orbán Executive contravenes the values of freedom, the rule of law and democracy that cement the European Union. The motion, approved in The Hague this Thursday, has the support of three of the four parties of the right and extreme right coalition that holds power. They have voted against the ultras of the Party for Freedom (PVV), led by the radical Geert Wilders.
“The European Commission is not reacting,” laments Eszter Polgári, lawyer and legal responsible for Hungary LGBTI+. “You are waiting for Member States,” he adds. Visit Madrid, accompanied by the NGO, on a mission to denounce attacks on the collective in the Central European country. “What happens in Hungary affects all of Europe,” he says.
Five years ago, Hungary began to import the laws against people LGTBI+ introduced by Vladimir Putin in Russia since 2013. It became the first EU country to follow that path. Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia have followed him. All laws against LGTBI+ people approved disguise the repression of rights as measures that supposedly seek to protect childhood.
Thus, the Hungarian norm “against pedophile criminals”, in addition to equating pedophilia with homosexuality, prohibits showing information about LGTBI+ reality to minors. That is, references in the media, books, schools, advertising ads, series … in 2023, 16 member states, the European Parliament and the Commission were united to bring this law before the EU Court of Justice. On November 19, 2024, the hearing of the case was held, “the greatest judicial battle in human rights in EU history”, summary from Reclaim. The sentence is expected for autumn of 2025.
