The black week of sexist violence -with the dramatic figure of four murders and two very serious women in eight days (an uptick that had not occurred for years)- has caused the agents who fight against it to relive the times of greatest cruelty . Judges, prosecutors and also politicians have reacted with concern to the shocking numbers of the last eight days and those of the month of May as a whole, which closes with six murdered women of the 18 recorded in 2022.
The concern is such that the Ministry of Equality has called for next Tuesday the meeting of the Working Group of the State Pact to seek a coordinated response between the Government and the autonomous communities.
The explosion of gender violence began with the murder of Florina, 26, in Montemayor (Córdoba) on May 22. Seven days later, Luisa’s ex-partner (48) killed her in the restaurant in Tomelloso (Ciudad Real) where she worked. The same day, in Benajarafe (Málaga), a man with a history of gender-based violence ended up with his 50-year-old ex-girlfriend. Maite, 51, was murdered by her husband in Tíjola, Almería, on Friday.
The list was closed by Alejandra, 44, who was given a monumental beating by her partner with a history in Carballo (A Coruña) early on Sunday and another woman, 46, also seriously ill in Malaga, assaulted by her boyfriend. These figures, reason the experts consulted by this newspaper, go back to years even before or immediately after the approval of the 2004 Law on Gender Violence.
What’s going on? All the experts agree that there is a kind of anesthesia in society, that sexist murders have become naturalized and that this happens, they agree, due to the irruption of denialism in the institutions.
As a background there is also a perpetual reflection: why is it not denounced? Three of the four murdered women had not gone to court. The data from the latest macro-survey of the Government Delegation for Gender Violence concludes that 80% of women silence it.
«Undoubtedly there is a minor social reproach before a sexist crime, a kind of resignation or indifference that is caused by a certain party that denies its existence. Gender Violence has become a political instrument that has caused consensus and priority to be lost. There is a part of society that internalizes this trivializing discourse of Gender Violence”, observes Susana Gisbert, an expert prosecutor in this area.
“Before,” he continues, “no one would get on a public stage to say that this type of violence did not exist or to ask for the repeal of a law that went ahead because of the tremendous problem that sexist violence is.” The prosecutor also dwells on the role of the media. «Before, the murder of a woman at the hands of her partner or her ex-partner occupied the front pages, now they do it when there is a sum of deaths. The social alarm is only activated in these last cases».
Regarding the problem of the absence of complaints, Gisbert is blunt: «It is not reported. We have stalled.” And he insists: “By reducing social reproach, the victims do not trust the system.” “The denial speeches are not helping us. We are feeling this way of decaffeinating sexist violence in the courts, ”warns one of the magistrates consulted.
The Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, acknowledges that this escalation causes “anger and pain” and assumes that from the institutions there is an obligation to “arrive on time” to avoid new deaths. The concern is such that the “analysis of the rise in femicides” will become the eighth permanent axis of study within the Working Group.
Conforms to The Trust Project criteria
