Carmen Calvo, Spain’s deputy prime minister and equality minister, recently proposed a bill that would require men to obtain a verbal “yes” from women before engaging in sexual activities.
“If a woman does not expressly say yes, that means no,” Calvo said, speaking at Spain’s Equality Commission.
The proposed legislation comes in the wake of a recent court ruling surrounding allegations of five men raping an 18-year-old girl during 2016’s Running of the Bulls festival.
The men were found not guilty of rape but were charged with sexual abuse instead, based on video footage from a cell phone that showed the girl not objecting.
Calvo argues that the new legislation, much like the verbal consent law Sweden recently adopted, would go a long way at making sexual assault cases more clearer for courts to rule on, rather than relying on interpretation.
Sweden’s law says that any sexual act that occurs without verbal consent is rape. The United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, and Iceland also have similar consent laws already on the books, while Australia is currently considering their own version.
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