The delegate of the Government in the Valencian Community, Pilar Bernabé, has participated in a colloquium with Professor Miguel Lorente, the first delegate of the Government for Gender Violence in Spain. In this conversation, the delegate has called for a “firm and united response against the negationism of male violence, a phenomenon that has gone from being marginal to a strategy on the part of the right and the far right”.
“Denying gender violence is not an ideological error, it is another form of violence because it opens the door to the aggressor,” he said. Bernabé regretted that this negationism is “finding fertile ground” among some young people through social networks, with “the rise of misogynistic discourses disguised as freedom of expression.” “They are, as he said, new forms of digital violence that reproduce the logics of control, blackmail and harassment.” But in the face of denial “there is no better strategy than the evidence of the data, the memory towards the victims and pedagogy”.
Currently, 16.6% of the active cases in the VioGén system are located in the Valencian Community. There are more than 16,700 protected women. More than 3,800 are active in the ATENPRO service and more than 500 pairs of telematics devices—known as COMETA—are active to prevent aggressors from approaching victims.
Since 2003, 163 women have been murdered in the Valencian Community by their partners or former partners. “Faced with this situation, we can only rebel,” said the slim woman who added that “the Government of Spain will not take a step backwards and does so with resources, with data and with action.”
Bernabé highlighted the figure Miguel Lorente, from whom he said that, as the first delegate of the Government for Gender Violence, “not only promoted public policies, but he was able to put words where many only saw figures,” according to the delegate. In addition, “I knew how to explain and educate. I knew how to inconvenience and open consciences,” I added.
Miguel Lorente, is a forensic physician, researcher and professor, “an ethical reference in the fight for equality and against male violence”.