The government delegate in Cantabria, Ainoa Quiñones, has called on society to stand up to “stop the massacre of women” that involves gender violence, a social scourge that in 2023 has left one murder a week in our country.
With an average of 60 women murdered every year in Spain since 2003, Quiñones has considered that this “terrible reality” is imposed as “an urgent public task” in which we must “give greater visibility, fight against everything that wants to equate violence, make comparisons and delegitimize the feminist struggle, mixing everything so that we do not know what we are talking about”.
Quiñones pointed this out this Monday in the presentation of the situation of gender violence in Cantabria in 2022, in which he detailed that the Community closed last year with 983 active cases in the Comprehensive Monitoring System in Cases of Gender Violence (VioGén) of the Ministry of the Interior.
The head of the Unit for the Coordination of Violence against Women of the Delegation, Diana Mirones; the Chief of Police of Cantabria, Carmen Martínez; and the Colonel Chief of the Civil Guard of Cantabria, Antonio Orantos, accompanied the delegate at the press conference, who recalled that 2022 has been “a very black year” in terms of gender violence with 49 women killed and in 2023 another 10 murders have been confirmed.
“All these women have been murdered by our side,” he stressed, and insisted on the importance of denouncing by calling 016 because it is “an act of responsibility and defense in the face of the slightest suspicion” that a woman may be “living in silence that horror.” He recalled that 016 is a phone that “leaves no trace” and to which last year 1,238 relevant calls were made from Cantabria compared to 883 in 2021, 40% more.
983 ACTIVE CASES AT CLOSE OF 2022
Regarding the data for 2022, Quiñones has detailed that the year closed with 983 cases of gender violence active in VioGén, 9.3% more than in 2021 that closed with 899. Of the total, 585 had some police protection order established by the judges. In addition, he has highlighted that, of the total, in 20 cases the victims were minors, compared to 14 of 2021, which represents an increase of 70%.
At this point, the delegate of the Government has warned of the “need to involve the whole society in eradicating behaviors among our young people that end in gender violence, many derived from the content they consume through social networks and that end up normalizing”. To date, in Cantabria there are active 15 cases of minor victims in VioGén and 9 of them have police protection.
In addition, of the total of 983 active cases at the end of 2022, 27 had associated electronic tracking devices installed to the aggressors (4 more than in 2021) and 240 women (11 more than in 2021) were users of the Telephone Service of Attention and Protection for victims of gender violence (ATENPRO), which offers victims immediate attention to the eventualities that may occur, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
At this point, the delegate of the Government has also detailed the updated data in this month of March, indicating that there are currently 1,006 active cases of gender violence in Cantabria, of which 15 are victims of minors, 160 have the ATENPRO device and 30 with telematic means.
“All that is done to end gender violence is little and to achieve it the collaboration between the administrations and the different agencies involved is fundamental and, therefore, I want to highlight the work of the National Police, the Civil Guard, the local police, the autonomous government, the municipalities and the associations that work to end this scourge,” he said.
WORKING TOGETHER FROM STATE AGENCIES
Quiñones has pointed out that the State works through the Units for the Coordination of Violence against Women of the Government’s delegations together with the Ministry of Equality and the Government Delegation against Gender Violence in the follow-up of cases and the coordination of resources for the care and support of victims but also collaborating with other agencies and entities to meet all the needs of security, psychosocial support to victims and children dependent on them.
For their part, both the National Police and the Civil Guard, in collaboration with the local police, process complaints of gender-based violence and take care of the safety of the victims with a protection order issued by the courts.
At this point, it has detailed that in Cantabria, in 2022, 1,639 complaints were filed for gender violence.
In the case of UFAM, the Family and Women ' s Unit of the National Police processed 482 complaints within its jurisdiction in 2022, 235 of which were recorded as gender-based violence and 85 as domestic violence.
Figures higher than those of 2021 in the specific area of gender violence (208) which “shows us again the importance of raising awareness among citizens in denouncing”, he said.
In the case of the Women and Minors Team (EMUME) of the Civil Guard, it has carried out in 2022 a total of 603 proceedings in matters related to gender violence, 330 of them due to complaints from the victims themselves.
MORE VISIBILITY BUT MORE COMPLICATED CASES
For his part, Mirones stressed that “every day more cases are becoming visible” despite the fact that, he acknowledged, “we continue to encounter very complicated cases, resistant to police intervention, since gender violence is a violence structurally different from other types of violence, which usually goes through different phases or cycles, and in which very complex psychological and emotional variables are intertwined”.
Like the government delegate, Mirones has stressed the “significant increase” in cases in minors, which begins “many times with psychological violence exercised through social networks, which are becoming a powerful tool for aggressors to exercise their control.”
“They control their schedules, they control their positions, they control their family and social relations, they humiliate them, they harass them, they threaten them… all in order to isolate them in order to control them, dominate them and submit them to their will. We can say that today male violence is hidden in the mobiles of our young people,” he said.
In view of this, he has indicated that the Unit against Gender Violence of the Government Delegation is promoting awareness activities aimed at this group and learn to “identify the red lines that should never be exceeded”.
These activities are part of the Master Plan for School Security, which is coordinated by the Government Delegation and through which the Police and the Civil Guard provide training in schools for young people on how to make appropriate use of social networks to prevent gender violence.
On the other hand, Mirones has detailed that the Unit also collaborates in the training of professionals of the Security Forces and Corps so that “they are sensitized and specialized to be able to give an agile and effective response to the victims” and promotes coordination not only institutional but also with the associations to work “in network” because it is “essential” in the face of this scourge.
In this regard, she has highlighted the promotion of the Coordination Tables on Gender Violence with the 28 municipalities with a VioGén agreement with the Ministry of the Interior and in which all police and assistance mechanisms and resources are coordinated in order to achieve a more agile and effective response for the victims, both for women and their children.”