The Government Delegation in Cantabria has inaugurated on Tuesday a training course aimed at 24 local police officers from different municipalities in the region with the aim of strengthening their preparation for new forms of gender violence.
The Government delegate in Cantabria, Eugenia Gómez de Diego, has been in charge of opening this training action, which is taught until Friday at the headquarters of the Delegation, organized by the Unit for the Coordination of Violence on Women and directed by its head, Diana Mirones.
As explained by Gómez de Diego, the course aims to "sensitize, train and involve" local agents in the detection, processing, investigation and accompaniment of victims of gender violence, with special attention to increasingly present modalities such as sexual, digital, vicarious or economic violence.
In this regard, the delegate has defended the need for continuous training so that the security forces are prepared for "a gender violence that evolves and manifests itself in more and more complex ways".
After thanking the participating local police for their "involvement" in this matter, Gómez de Diego stressed the importance of the agents knowing first-hand and knowing how to coordinate with the assistance resources, both state and regional. “This will certainly help ensure victims’ rights and effectively address their situation,” he said.
The course is within the Citizen Security Training Plan of the Government of Cantabria 2025 and has the participation of criminal judges from Santander, the Institute of Legal Medicine, responsible for the specialized units EMUME and UFAM of the Civil Guard and the National Police, respectively, and the coordinator of the assistance network of Cantabria, which, according to the Delegation, "will allow progress in institutional coordination".
Minute of silence
The inaugural day began with a minute’s silence in memory of Pilar, a 50-year-old woman murdered in Marbella allegedly by her partner. With this new male crime, 13 women have already been murdered so far in 2025 by their partners or ex-partners. Since 2003, when official data began to be collected, the number of women killed by gender violence in Spain has risen to 1,307. Since 2013, 63 children have been killed in contexts of violence against their mothers.
Currently, in Cantabria there are 1,500 women under follow-up in the VIOGEN protection system.
“This is not an individual problem, it is a matter of state. And we addressed it from the renewed State Pact against Gender Violence, which marks the path: prevention, protection, reparation and justice", concluded the delegate.