Carles Puigdemont’s party announced this Tuesday that it will vote against the use of clothing such as the niqab or the niqab. “Junts already defended this proposal in the Parliament and also defended that this regulation can be decided by the Parliament of Catalonia with the transfer of immigration powers that were overthrown by Vox, Podemos and PP,” Junts sources defend. The party also assures that “we have never voted on any Vox proposal in Congress,” but they do not give details of the proposal they are going to present in the same sense as Vox’s.
The proposal that Junts will present throughout this morning includes a total ban on the burqa and the niqab in all public spaces. It also adds the prohibition of all types of veils in schools, as confirmed by sources from the independence party.
This Tuesday, the Congress of Deputies debates the bill presented by Vox for . Vox’s proposal begins by clarifying that it is not “a religious issue,” but later talks about “Islamic clothing,” the PSOE emphasizes. The same sources affirm that there is jurisprudence from the Supreme Court that annulled regulations to prevent the use of the burqa in municipal facilities.
The extreme right’s proposal also invokes security reasons to prevent the presence of fully covered people in public spaces, an argument that does not convince the socialists because, they argue, in that case they should also include clothing such as balaclavas or masks. “It is another one from Vox to feed their hate speech,” the PSOE concludes.
The ban on the burqa and the niqab in public spaces is, one of the communities that concentrates the highest proportion of Muslim migrants. The most notable case, and the one that ended up dragging down the others, was that of the Lleida City Council. In 2010, during the government of socialist Àngel Ros, the council approved an ordinance that prohibited the use of these two garments, the and the in municipal buildings and facilities. The text was approved with the votes of PSC, CiU and PP and provided for the prohibition of access and the imposition of fines. Shortly after Lleida approved its text,: Cervera and Tàrrega (Lleida) and Tarragona, Reus, Cunit and El Vendrell (Tarragona).
In 2013, in a widely publicized ruling, and with it, other initiatives that emerged at the municipal level were nipped in the bud.
