A year after Spain passed a law that allows for changing legal gender through a simple administrative process at the request of the citizen, the number of Spaniards requesting the change has increased by almost 400%.
The law is the most extreme legislation in Europe regarding legal sex changes. In some, but not all cases, minors require the consent of their parents, while, for adults, a simple request is enough. Spain had previously allowed for changing legal gender only in cases where a person had received a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria and undergone cross-sex hormone treatments or surgical interventions.
The UK never managed to pass a self-identification bill and has now outlawed cross-sex hormone therapy for minors; French senators are calling for a similar ban; and Scandinavian countries have also backed away from the practice.
As in the UK, the Spanish law faced strong opposition from many feminists, concerned parents, and a section of physicians and psychologists—all of whom were ignored by the government.
A year on, the government has lauded the sadly pioneering law.
“The law is working and the vast majority of changes have produced an improvement in the lives of people and people in transition,” the new Minister of Equality Ana Redondo said in recent statements made at an appearance at the Valladolid Law School.
Indeed, the numbers indicate that it may be working too well and that the fears of opponents have proven true.
The Spanish newspaper El Mundo reports that in 2004, a mere three people managed to change their legal sex, while in 2023, a whopping 5,139 succeeded. That amounts to almost 15 every day—four times more than in 2022, when 1,306 people changed their sex in the civil registry. In the twelve months since March 2nd, 2023, when the law went into effect, legal sex changes have increased by 392%. The majority of the applicants—64%—were men changing their legal sex to female.
There is also the strange case of the appearance of the ‘Non-Normative Trans,’ a group of some 200 soldiers and policemen who have changed their sex legally from male to female without any medical intervention whatsoever and in many cases retain their male names and married status. They have been called out by trans-rights groups as fraudsters but have staunchly defended their position.
“We are as trans as the others,” sources from the association told El Mundo and said they were considering reporting their detractors “for transphobia.” Many suspect that the male soldiers and policemen have changed their sex to be able to take advantage of affirmative action policies for women.
At the same time, the Trans Platform Federation told The Objective that it had urged the Prosecutor’s Office to open proceedings against several journalists who had come out strongly against the law. The journalists in question had made statements including that “the law sucks,” pointing out that it “annuls women” and warning of the possibility of fraud.
Redondo, nevertheless, continues to defend the law.
“Whenever there is a norm, there are those who abuse the norm,” she also told the media in Valladolid, “but we cannot make the exception category. And therefore, when there is abuse, it will be condemned and paid for.”
However, it will prove difficult if not impossible to demonstrate fraud because the law was designed precisely so that a person’s stated choice of sex or gender could only be affirmed and not questioned.
