Setting sight: Spain’s opposition party Partido Popular regional deputy Mar Galceran at the regional parliament in Valenciaties.
| Photo Credit: AFP
Addressing Valencia’s regional Parliament, Mar Galceran’s confidence is striking: she is Spain’s first lawmaker with Down syndrome and one of just a few elected across Europe.
She is fighting to change Spanish society’s approach to people with disabilities, the formal description of which is to be amended in the Constitution on Thursday.
Ms. Galceran, 46, was voted into Valencia’s regional Parliament in September, the first person with Down syndrome to be elected in Spain at the regional or national level. Elected as an MP for the right-wing opposition Popular Party (PP), she wants “to change the way society views people with disabilities”.
And she has welcomed the rare move to revise Spain’s Constitution to replace the word “handicapped” (“disminuido”) with “people with disabilities” which is to be approved by the Senate upper house on Thursday.
Using the term “disminuido” or its colloquial equivalent “minusvalido” (“less valid”) has long been “offensive and insulting to the collective of people with disabilities”, she said .
The reform, which also expands their rights, is only the third-ever change to Spain’s Constitution since it was approved in 1978, and the first of a social nature.
A member of the PP since she was 18, she spent many years as a civil servant, and always took a stand against the discrimination she faced over her genetic condition. She spent four years as head of Asindown, a foundation in the Valencia region which helps the families of children with Down syndrome. Ms. Galceran says her teenage years were marked by “rejection”. Growing up, she had “acquaintances but never friends. Her network of real support always came from her family, who “have always supported me in my decisions”.
A ‘necessary’ reform
Since being sworn in, Ms. Galceran has been active in the parliamentary committee on people with disabilities, which she believes needs a “cross-party” approach within the healthcare sector, within families, within work and education.
For her, the constitutional reform was one of the top priorities. While it remains largely symbolic, Ms. Galceran sees it as a “fair” and “necessary”.
Until now, the wording of article 49 of the Constitution has said that Spain’s public authorities are responsible for policies involving the “treatment, rehabilitation and integration of the physically, sensory and mentally handicapped”.
The new version says “persons with disabilities are entitled to rights” that must be exercised in “freedom and genuine equality, without discrimination”, and stresses the importance of attention to “the specific needs of women and girls with disabilities.
A large majority of Spanish lawmakers approved the reform on its first reading last Thursday. Only those from the far-right Vox voted against.
Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez hailed the vote as “a great day for Spain’s democracy”.
“There is still a long way to go to achieve full inclusion, to embrace the diversity that defines us and to make visible what for so long was painfully ignored.”
