Their names were Èlia (17), Belén (24), Francy (35), Zhen (47), Carmen (54), Caterina (64), Evarista (91)… and their names will be remembered as part of the 52 women killed by gender violence before the end of the year. And there could be 53, if the Pontevedra case is confirmed, which the police have been investigating since the day before yesterday. Different ages, origins and different classes, but all of them killed by their partner or ex-partner. They were daughters, some, mothers, and even grandmothers, whose aggressors took away their most precious right: life.
The number of fatalities, to which are also added two minors killed by vicarious violence and 51 more who have been orphaned, is alarming: although there is more social awareness and an increase in reports of gender-based violence, it remains the average number of victims over the last ten years. With all the legislative advances and public policies in the field of equality, the most high-risk cases remain almost hidden: 77% of fatal victims had not previously reported their killer.
The reason is multifactorial. “Many women think that they will be able to get out of the situation of violence without the need to report and trust that their aggressor will not go further. Sometimes, the idea has been conveyed that violence is like a ladder, which goes from the most subtle to the most explicit, but this does not mean that the aggressor has to go through all the steps before he ends up committing a femicide”, he explains Carla Valls, criminal lawyer and criminologist. Another factor that stands out is the fear of suffering institutional violence.
In this line, Carmen Ruiz Repullo, professor of Sociology at the University of Granada, assures that women feel unprotected by the system, as they consider that they will not be believed or for “fear of reprisals from the aggressor”. For this reason, many victims, with dependent children, think that the way out of violence is a civil divorce.
To these factors must be added the lack of repair. “The responsibility of the State is not limited solely to the criminal sphere, but should also include the reparation of the damage”, points out Ana Martínez, anthropologist and professor of sociology at the Rey Juan Carlos University, and recalls that the public authorities must act with due diligence. And this requires “preventing, investigating, prosecuting, punishing and adequately repairing acts of gender-based violence”.
The lawyer Júlia Humet, an expert in sexist violence, believes that there is a “normalization” of certain attitudes and behaviors. “There is a tendency to play down the importance of violence or to think that these are issues that must be resolved by the couple.”
Despite the calls to report situations of gender violence, Catalonia and Madrid are the ones that apply the fewest orders and protective measures. Year after year, Catalonia has refused, on average, more than half of the protection orders of the last ten years: in 2022 alone, 52.9% of the total were refused. “It can be influenced by the fact that Catalonia uses its own risk assessment system carried out by the Mossos, while in the rest of Spain, the National Police uses the VioGèn system”, says Humet. Valls considers that “in some way our judges have criteria that differ from other legal traditions”.
Another factor that discourages reporting is the denialist discourses, which continue to make a fortune in society and, especially in the youth. One in four young men, aged 15 to 29, considers that male violence “does not exist or is a ideological invention”, according to the latest survey by the FAD Foundation.
Carmen Ruiz, specialist in gender violence in adolescents and young people, believes that society is immersed in a “patriarchal reaction” against legislative advances and feminist public policies. “You are not born an aggressor, but if in your environment, in your WhatsApp group or in political speeches it is questioned that violence has no gender or that most of the allegations are false, beliefs are legitimized and masculinity is reinforced.”
On the one hand, the denialism that spreads in Spanish society generates in potential aggressors a “justifying climate” and a “social protection” to commit the crime -says Ana Martínez- and, on the other, the potential victims they feel that public opinion will not only not believe them, but will blame them.
The Minister of Equality, Ana Redondo, will go today to the demonstration called at 12 o’clock in Madrid by the Feminist Movement of Madrid, which is an abolitionist of prostitution and against the trans law. The new Head of Equality supports one of the two currents in which
feminism in Spain has been divided, granted
that Commission 8-M – defender of trans law – has called a march at 6 p.m., to which Irene Montero
has confirmed that he will attend.
