Ayuso promotes a law to eliminate pejorative terms about disability, but maintains “handicapped” in the autonomy statute

The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, confirmed this Monday that her government will promote a law to eliminate all pejorative terms regarding the disabled from regional rules and regulations. However, the PP of Madrid, which is also chaired by Díaz Ayuso, blocked in the spring the proposal of the PSOE and Más Madrid to reform the autonomy statute and eliminate the reference to the “handicapped.” of the article 26. As a consequence, the main regional standard will maintain that terminology while the new law eliminates it from the others. A decision that has provoked criticism in the left-wing opposition and “great disappointment” in the Madrid branch of the Spanish Committee of Representatives of People with Disabilities (CERMI), which avoids evaluating the argument used by the PP to block a statutory reform with the which he says he agrees with: the possibility, never aired by anyone, that the PSOE and its allies would reform the statute to their liking when the Assembly’s modification to remove the term “handicapped” should be endorsed by Congress.

“We welcome the modification of regulations that include inappropriate terms, but we continue to think that not modifying the statute of autonomy is a great disappointment,” summarizes Óscar Moral, president of CERMI Madrid. “We do not go into evaluating the arguments [que se emplean para no hacer la reforma], but our disappointment is great, because all the parties committed to modifying the statute during the campaign,” he continues. “And we feel that disappointment because the statute is the fundamental norm of legal organization, the base of the pyramid, and the fact that it is not modified means that an inappropriate term remains, which is not in accordance with the Constitution, is hurtful, and violates the dignity of people with disabilities.”

Moral attends Díaz Ayuso’s announcement “live and direct.” It happens this Monday, during the delivery of the 10th edition of the Plena Inclusion Madrid Awards. The president takes the floor, and puts her stamp on an initiative already advanced by the government spokesperson, Miguel Ángel García Martín, in the spring.

“Next week we will take the first procedures to the government council to approve an autonomous law so that we ensure that there is not a single, if any, pejorative term about disability in all, all of the Community’s regulations. from Madrid,” says Díaz Ayuso.

However, in April, the PP of the regional Assembly closed the door to a reform of the autonomy statute to replace the term “handicapped” with “people with disabilities.” Although the conservatives agreed on the merits of this modification, they argued that to approve it they had to wait for the right to control the Congress of Deputies. Since it affects an organic law, the reform had to go through the Lower House, where the PSOE and its partners have a majority, Díaz Ayuso’s party recalled. That, in the opinion of the PP spokesperson in the Assembly, Carlos Díaz-Pache, turned the modification into “a Trojan horse for Pedro Sánchez and separatism to play with the statute.”

With that context in mind, the fact that Ayuso has announced a legal reform that does not affect the main norm of the Community has left a bittersweet taste in the opposition.

“It is a reform that only aims to cover up the shame of the Popular Party,” they argue in Más Madrid. “The reform they propose does not even affect the statute, so the term disabled would continue to remain there,” they recall. “It makes no sense that they did not admit the reform of the statute, and that now they do this to try to make us forget that embarrassing image.”

A line of argument similar to that of the PSOE. “The Statute is not included. What they are going to do is make up for laws from more than 20 years ago,” they explain in the party led by Juan Lobato. “It is an announcement of something that we support, but that arrives late and does not solve a double problem,” they continue. “First, obsolete laws on disability, both in terminology and in the treatment of disability: they maintain the paternalistic conception and not that of rights,” they list. “Second, a new regulatory framework is urgently needed: reform of the statute and general law that guarantees the rights of people with disabilities.”

This contrasts with an interlocutor who has the confidence of the president to explain the PP’s decision. “The Statute of Autonomy is not going to be opened and sent with this very specific issue to Congress because the current composition of its political forces poses a risk and some additional issue of the Madrid statute could be modified that does not correspond to the will of the that has emanated from the polls in this Community,” he says. “What we will do, and it will in fact be totally effective, is eliminate all references in all regional regulations to pejorative expressions in that sense,” she adds. “That is, maximum commitment on this issue and it will be done through a Law,” she emphasizes. “To correct all the regional regulations in that sense, it is not necessary to touch the Statute. And the Statute is not touched due to that risk mentioned.”

It all started at the end of January. Then, the PSOE spokesperson, Juan Lobato,
proposed eliminating the concept of disabled from the statute, in line with the modification that had been made to the Spanish Constitution, and which had the sponsorship of the PP to eliminate the term “disabled” and replace it. by “people with disabilities”.

The Madrid conservatives were open to this from the beginning, but they advanced that other issues could be included in the negotiation of the reform: changing the name of the Assembly to the Parliament of Madrid, incorporating the figure of the Decree Law for emergency situations or lowering the number of deputies in the Chamber.

To prevent the negotiations from being blocked, the parliamentary groups of the left (PSOE and Más Madrid) registered on March 21 the reform to replace the term “handicapped” with “people with disabilities”, waiting for the popular ones to finally add their proposals in the modification of the Statute. But the operation ran aground in April.

A few months later, Ayuso announced a rule that the government spokesperson had already advanced. However, the word “disabled” will remain, at least for now, in the statute.

This is how they try to negotiate the paradox in the popular parliamentary group: “The bill that the president has announced will update the terminology that refers to people with disabilities in all its laws and regulations, and in the Statute of Autonomy it will also be done when there are a majority in the Congress of Deputies that allows it to be done with the guarantee that other sections will not also be modified.”

Subscribe here to our newsletter about Madrid, which is published every Tuesday and Friday.