Implementing intersectionality in Spain: challenges and contradictions in the legal framing of equality

This paper presents the recently funded MSCA project RELIEF (REsearching Legal Implementation of an Intersectional Framework: a feminist sociolegal analysis of opportunities and obstacles), which investigates intersectionality as an anti-discrimination framework in Spanish legislation, legal practice and public policy. Intersectionality is approached as an analytical tool for understanding how the interplay of power relations shapes individual and collective conditions, thus developing more inclusive laws and policies capable of addressing social complexity and structural vulnerability (Engeli and Mazur 2024, Coll-Planas et al. 2023, Boulos and La Barbera 2022). With the adoption of Law 15/2022, Spain explicitly introduced legal protection against intersectional discrimination at the national level and RELIEF examines how institutional actors across different governmental levels have implemented intersectionality in their legal praxis, focusing on structural axes of discrimination such as gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, nationality, disability, and socioeconomic status (La Barbera et al. 2020). The paper discusses the project’s methodological challenges and presents preliminary findings. Combining legal analysis with qualitative and participatory methods, RELIEF aims to understand intersectionality from a law-in-action perspective. To achieve this goal, a sociolegal analysis of Spanish anti-discrimination law is conducted, engaging institutional actors, academic experts and civil society through interviews, focus groups and participatory research initiatives. The first phase of RELIEF, focusing on the legal analysis of the novelty of Law 15/22 within the national and EU framework, investigated how the integration of intersectionality reflects the evolving Spanish legal and political landscape. The parliamentary debate around the law reveals a shift from an individual to a community-based understanding of intersectionality, emphasizing structural vulnerability and historical discrimination of specific groups. This evolution owes much to the efforts of civil society and activist movements, which have played a crucial role in pushing intersectionality into the legal agenda. However, the focus on vulnerability and collective protection also introduces ambiguities in legal interpretation and implementation. Indeed, a collective understanding of discrimination, while promising, may produce ambiguous outcomes in judicial settings, where procedural and interpretative challenges continue to limit the transformative potential of intersectionality.