Spain held its general election over the weekend, in which the most female MPs in the country’s history were elected. Now, women make up 39.4 percent of Spain’s lower parliament – 138 seats total, compared to 125 in the 2011 election, when women made up 35 percent of the parliament population. This year, 212 men total were elected. In what’s known as the “40 percent rule,” Spain’s equality laws disallow either sex from making up 60 percent of the electoral lists — meaning women must make up at least 40 percent of the lists of candidates put forth by parties in an election cycle.
A notable elected figure is Rita Bosaho of Alicante, Spain’s first ever black MP. The fifty-year-old was born in Equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish colony in West Africa, and has a long-standing feminist history.
