The government of Catalonia is encouraging women to go topless in a new campaign video.

In the video, a man proudly displaying his bare chest is compared to a woman forced to cover up.

The opening titles read: “This nipple is free, this one is not.”

The video was shared through a Twitter post by the Department of Equality and Feminism in the region (El Departamento de Igualdad y Feminismos de la Generalitat) on Monday, 23rd August.

This is part of an initiative that hopes to assert the right of Catalonian women to expose their breasts at the public beaches and pools found in the autonomous community of Spain.

The post said: “The sexualisation of women’s bodies starts from a young age.

“The fact that we have to cover our breasts in some spaces is a sign of this.

“It’s also discrimination.”

This move parallels ‘Free the Nipple’, a campaign created by a political movement known as Top Freedom in 2012 that aims to change laws that prevent women from going topless in places where men are allowed to be bare-chested.

This was after a filmmaker known as Lina Esco created a documentary of the same name during that year where she is seen running through the streets of New York City topless.

The clip was removed from Facebook in 2013 for violating its guidelines while the campaign launched a debate on the nudity policies on social media platforms including Instagram, which only began to allow images of women breastfeeding on its site in 2014.