Spain is legalising bestiality, claims Polish justice minister in warning over “leftist virus”

Poland’s justice minister has claimed that the domestic opposition party wants to ban meat and that Spain – ruled by a left-wing government – is legalising bestiality. He cited this as evidence that “the virus of leftism” is threatening Poland and Europe. In fact, both claims are misleading.

“Leftism is the plague of the 21st century,” tweeted Zbigniew Ziobro, who leads a hard-right junior party in Poland’s ruling national-conservative coalition. “The Spanish allowed children to change sex on demand. Now they are legalising bestiality.”

“Here [in Poland] the leftist virus is also spreading – the infected Rafał Trzaskowski [mayor of Warsaw and deputy leader of the main opposition party] already wants to ban meat,” added the justice minister.

The claim regarding Spain relates to new animal rights legislation that was approved by the lower house of parliament, the Congress of Deputies, earlier this month and has now passed to the upper-house Senate.

The bill would change the penal code from criminalising “subjecting [animals] to sexual exploitation” (as it currently does) to instead criminalising “acts of a sexual nature…[that] cause an animal injury that requires treatment”.

The proposed new wordings led to speculation that, because it only criminalises sexual acts that cause injury to animals, those that do not would be permitted. Those claims were amplified by far-right media outlets and the national-conservative Vox party, reports left-wing news service elDiario.es.

The website describes the claims as a “hoax”. It notes that bestiality specifically has in fact never been criminalised in Spain, only (since 2015) “sexual exploitation” of animals, wording that suggests acts for economic gain.

As such, the new bill actually strengthens the law by expanding it to cover all “acts of a sexual nature” that cause harm, suggests elDiario.es.

Fact-checking service Newtral agrees that the purpose of the bill is to strengthen the protection of animals from sexual acts. But it cites legal and animal-rights experts who suggest that the wording of the law should be changed to more clearly criminalise any such acts.

The claim that Poland’s opposition wants to ban the consumption of meat has been the main talking point among politicians from and media supportive of the government over the last week.

The idea stems from the fact that C40 Cities – a group of 96 cities worldwide seeking to take action against climate change – recently commissioned a report that contained recommendations for significant cuts in meat and dairy consumption, as well as reductions in purchases of clothing and use of cars and aeroplanes.

Warsaw is part of C40, and the city’s mayor, Rafał Trzaskowski, is a leading figure in Civic Platform (PO), Poland’s main centrist opposition party. That led many on the Polish right to claim that Trzaskowski and PO want to introduce the severe restrictions outlined in the report.

“We reject the projects endorsed by Trzaskowski,” said Jarosław Kaczyński, chairman of the main ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party. “We are for freedom. Poles will never hear from us that they have to limit eating meat or drinking milk.”

Trzaskowski, however, condemned such claims as “manipulation”. He noted that the contents of the C40 report were just recommendations, not policies he was planning to introduce in Warsaw or PO in Poland more widely.

“Once again: we will not introduce any restrictions on eating meat in Warsaw,” he tweeted.

Main image credit: Antonio.velez/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY-SA 3.0 ES)

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.