The Spanish government announced on the 20th of December 2013 the reform of the Abortion Law, turning it into one of the most restrictive in the world, banning abortion even in cases of malformation.

An abused of power was denounced by the world’s media, and Spanish women took to the streets, but the government ignored them.

Our objective was to gather signatures, mobilize people, and reopen the debate to avoid the reform’s approval.

In order to get media coverage, without any media budget, we needed a controversial as well as attractive content for the press, influencers, and the public.

Our answer to this brief was intimately linked to the defense of one of women’s fundamental rights: the right to decide whether or not the want to become mothers. A right that was going to be denied by the government, without taking into account their opinion.

It’s because of this that we sought to represent Spanish women, and getting their voices finally heard.

We decided to show what the consequences would be if the law was finally approved. We opened a travel agency (online and physical office) that allowed women to travel abroad in order to have a safe abortion.

This essence of this campaign is center precisely on the struggle against the restriction of Spanish women’s civil liberties.

Women’s right to choose their own future would be limited by the Abortion Law’s reform, being faced with one of the world’s most restrictive contraceptive laws.

Spanish women, in case of pregnancy, would be forced to become mothers, regardless of the personal, medical, or social circumstances. Only those with economic resources would be able to travel abroad to terminate their pregnancy.

Despite the controversy around the issue, and of the vast social rejection, proven by official polls, the government decided to carry on whit its plan disregarding everyone, by using its absolute majority, gotten in the last election, in a more than questionable way.

With this campaign, CELEM (European Women’s Lobby) made people aware of the very real consequences that would derive from the approval of this law. There was widespread indignation and it had its reflection on the media and on society.

The data gathered at the end of the campaign showed that with a minimal budget our client obtained: a ROI of 1,044,103 € and a global audience of over 38.5 million people; generated more than 3 million Twitter impressions and gathered over 50,000 signatures on our Change.org petition. (Data provided by QMS public relations agency and Change.org).

But most importantly is that because of all this repercussion the campaign reached Congress reopening the debate on the Abortion Law. To such a degree, that on 23rd September 2014, the minister who sponsored the law, Alberto Ruiz Gallardon, resigned as a direct consequence of President Mariano Rajoy’s withdrawal of the reform.

Thus reaching CELEM’s main goal: preventing the passing of the law.

In Spain there’s great awareness regarding gender stereotypes, trying little by little to eradicate them on every level: public and private.

But this is a slow process, and one that requires a great effort from all of us, both from the institutions and citizens. Specially taking into consideration a past marked by a predominant chauvinist culture inherited by a dictatorship, where women’s social role was restricted to mother and housewife.

Regarding abortion, most of Spanish society supports women’s right to choose, independently from their political ideology, even though women and feminist groups have historically championed its claims.

With Abortiontravel we showed that there’s still a long road ahead, since a social injustice that directly affects women, was being promoted, precisely, by those, the politicians, who should be fighting for the rights and equality of that collective.

To achieved that we showed the reality to which women would be subjected to when they loose the fundamental right to choose whether they wish to become mothers or not. This got a great part of society to become aware of the issue and opposed to the reform. The campaign impacted men and women alike and joined them in protest. A response that shows an open door to a more just and equal society.

In Spain the campaign was especially relevant because the reality lived during the last dictatorship is still fresh in the society’s collective memory, a period in which, to terminate a pregnancy, women had to travel abroad. If this reform came to pass, this situation would had repeated itself, supposing a 40 year regression in Spanish society’s rights.

The campaign’s strategy was based on having the maximum impact possible (without any media budget whatsoever).

To accomplish this we needed to create a controversial and notorious content that could be attractive to the press, influencers, and the general public, and that could be advertised through a PR campaign.

So we created Abortiontravel, “the agency that should never exist”. A travel agency capable of illustrating our future reality, and one through which we could communicate our messages.

Because the campaign touched on issues that weren’t analyzed in previous debates or social protests, it reached the general public as well as the media:

- The cost women would have to pay for traveling outside of Spain to have an abortion (economic as well as emotional).

- That those with sufficient economic resources could still have an abortion despite the law.

- That a very lucrative business could generate out of this situation.

By situating the public in the reality of what our client pretended to avoid, it triggered a profound feeling of indignation that lead to a massive response by the media and Spanish society.

The mission of The European Women’s Lobby' (CELEM) is to achieve equality between women and men, to promote women’s rights in all spheres of public and private life, to work towards economic and social justice for all women in their diversity, and to eliminate all forms of male violence against women.

The abortion law’s reform would prevent Spanish women from terminating their pregnancies freely, and this would imply a series of direct personal and social consequences, that would not only hurt women, but men as well.

This is why with our campaign we sought to defend women’s right to choose, and preventing this social injustice from carrying through.