The ruling party explicitly targets “priests, pastors of cults and coaches” as examples of those who could be committing a crime against LGBTQI people.
The PSOE parliamentarian Víctor Gutiérrez, defending the law proposition to ban conversion therapies, in June 2025. / Photo: [link]Grupo Parlamentario Socialista en el Congreso[/link], Flickr.
While LGBTQI Pride celebrations take place in the streets, the Congress of Deputies of Spain has resumed the processing of a law that would penalise the practice of so-called 'conversion therapies' with imprisonment.
The text proposes prison sentences of six months to two years for anyone who “applies or practises acts, methods, programmes, techniques or procedures of aversion or conversion, whether psychological, physical, pharmacological or of any other nature, intended to modify, repress, eliminate or deny their sexual orientation, sexual identity or gender expression, affecting their bodily integrity or physical or mental health or seriously undermining their moral integrity”.
The PSOE (Social Democrats, the main party in Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's government) has brought the bill before the national parliament for consideration. It calls for the inclusion of so-called ‘conversion therapies’ in the Spanish Penal Code.
Socialist MP Víctor Gutiérrez said in the debate in the Congress of Deputies in Madrid that so-called “conversion therapies” are ‘one of the worst forms of violence that a person can suffer, which is to be forced to hate oneself, to be physically or psychologically tortured to strip oneself of one's orientation or identity”.
In addition, he explicitly pointed to faith groups as the main perpetrators of this kind of abuse aganst LGBTQI people, according to RTVE. “There are still families, priests, sect leaders and ‘coaches’ who sell the same lie: that sexual and gender diversity can be eradicated with prayer sessions, electric shocks or medication”, he said. “They do so with impunity, often hiding behind religious associations and cults”.
The main opposition party, the conservative PP, along with other minority groups, approved the text of the law. Only Vox (a nationalist party with a Catholic base) voted against it, claiming that innocent people would be persecuted under the new law.
Several left-wing groups even used the term “torture” to refer to ‘conversion therapies’.
The public debate demonstrates the vague and very broad use of a term that in recent years has been used to describe very diverse realities.
The Spanish Evangelical Alliance (AEE) has issued a statement expressing its outright rejection of the draft law. The AEE claims that such proposals are based on a “distortion of the concept’ and use pejorative language to project an image of “manipulation and torture”, when such practices are already punishable under existing legislation and do not need additional legal reinforcement.
The evangelical body in Spain says the term ‘conversion therapies’ is an “ideological construct” designed to generate rejection, with echoes reminiscent of laws typical of “totalitarian regimes”.
“Supportive treatments or personal and pastoral assistance initiatives for people who want to restore consistency between their biological sex and their gender identity have nothing to do with manipulation or torture”, the Alliance states in its statement.
[photo_footer] Excerpt of the Spanish Evangelical Alliance statement of 24 June 2025 on the draft law to punish so-called conversion therapies. [/photo_footer] According to the AEE, this new legislation seeks to penalise even the professional or pastoral support requested, freely and with informed consent, by people who wish to restore consistency between their biological sex and their gender identity. Far from representing forms of coercion, they explain, these are scientifically proven therapeutic supports applied in other similar contexts, which seek to promote the well-being of those who voluntarily request them.
The statement warns of a “fundamental contradiction” in the legislative approach: while gender transition is promoted, protected and financed, the reverse path — detransitioning or returning to gender congruence — is penalised. This, says the AEE, constitutes an “imposition of a moral criterion’ and discrimination based on the direction of personal change.
From this perspective, the Alliance asks: “Where is the strict respect for the free determination of the individual?” It adds that in a democratic society, the support given to those who wish to transition should be equally available to those who seek to reverse that process. The proposed law, they say, establishes a “morally tutelary” model that nullifies personal decision-making and opens the door to stigmatisation of those who offer help to detransitioning processes.
In its statement, the AEE also raises the possibility that this law could force professionals or pastoral agents who do not want to give up accompanying those who ask for help to resort to conscientious objection. “If the aforementioned bill is passed, it will open the way to having to exercise conscientious objection as the only legitimate and democratic recourse”, they warn.
Finally, the Alliance calls on parliamentarians to vote on this proposal “in good conscience”, appealing to democratic principles and respect for the fundamental rights of all people, beyond ideologies or currents of thought. “This is not a matter that should be governed by ideology, but by the deepest and most universal sense of democracy”, concludes the statement signed by the Board of Directors of the evangelical organisation.
In 2020, the Spanish Evangelical Alliance already warned that this lack of definition of what ‘conversion therapies’ are or are not is of great concern to professionals such as doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists, but also to evangelical pastors and other believers who could be accused of practising “therapy” when someone “freely receives the professional treatment and spiritual support they voluntarily require”.
The debate about what ‘conversion therapies’ are and how to separate coercion or violence from people's psychological and spiritual search has also sparked debate in countries such as the United Kingdom, where in 2020 and also in 2023 the Evangelical Alliance of the United Kingdom also came out in favour of respect for both people's personal decisions and religious freedom.
Church leaders in the UK denounced in an open letter that “some even want a ‘conversion therapy’ ban to cover gentle, non-coercive prayer. This raises the alarming prospect of police and prosecutors having to decide whether someone has prayed ‘the wrong kind of prayer’”.
In Switzerland, Christian parliamentarians have also addressed the debate, calling for honest conversations and a calm debate beyond ideological struggles.
Portuguese evangelicals have also addressed in the United Nations Human Rights Council.
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