Abel Losada warns in the 25-N about the attempt to use the victims of gender violence that hides critical aspects of the VioGén system

The subdelegate of the Government in Pontevedra, Abel Losada, presided this morning the commemorative act of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in which the head of the Unit of Violence against Women of the Subdelegation, María José Rodríguez, read the Institutional Declaration approved by the Government on the occasion of 25N. The artist Mariña Rey Noya was in charge of opening the event, which was attended by various personalities from the political, civil, police and military fields, with the interpretation of the song Compañera.
Abel Losada recalled that in the province there are 1,805 women covered by the VioGén system, which guarantees follow-up by the National Police, the Civil Guard and also the local police, and stressed that thanks to this system “every day, at all hours, there are women who can go out on the street”. “VioGén saves many lives without filling 5-column headlines,” he said.
The subdelegate rejected the “opportunistic, demagogic and very uninformed criticisms of the VioGen system” that occurred at the root of the last two sexist murders in the province, and repeated “that none of them occurred because of a VioGen failure.” He warned against the temptations to use the victims of male violence and their families, “just as in his day some political formation already decided to try to use the victims of terrorist violence.” This respect recalled that the Government of Spain already has a proposal to extend the Pact of State signed in 2017 and is also implementing continuous improvements in VioGén, so there are “party criticisms”. “Everything in this life can be improved, but VioGén is improved by speaking little and doing a lot.” “If the opinion on VioGén, a pioneering system in the world, depends on who governs in Madrid, we are going badly,” he concluded.
Losada insisted on the need for governments to allocate resources to the fight against gender violence. “We all have the duty to exercise as social activists against negationism and equidistance, because that intermediate place between feminism and machismo does not exist; it is called machismo.” “You have to choose a side,” he insisted. He also stressed the importance of denouncing “not on the networks and with hashtags, but in the courts, in the barracks and in the police stations.” “The one who rules,” added the subdelegate, “are the denunciations and the sentences, since blow by blow, autopsy by autopsy, male violence kills.” “There are roofs against which it is advisable not to throw stones,” he emphasized.
Fadoua and Astilla
The subdelegate began his speech with the names of Fadoua and Astilla, the two victims of male violence in our province and expressed his concern about the “obvious signs of regression among young people.” “I do not want to send an optimistic message here because I am not clear that we are winning this battle and because Teaching, and fundamentally Public Education, has a role to play in building values and civic education.”
He ended the institutional discourse by recalling typical phrases of the victims exculpating their abusers and with a shared desire: “Today is November 25th, just one month away for Christmas Eve. Let’s celebrate it, let’s hope!, without missing any more.”
The institutional event was also attended by the students of the #Master in Art Direction in Advertising of the University of Vigo, who presented the awareness campaign on gender violence commissioned within the framework of a Service-Learning program between the University and the Subdelegation. A campaign focused on the impact of violence on immigrant women in an irregular situation and directed by the dean of Social Sciences, Emma Torres. The five campaigns presented, under the headings “Universal language, the language of women”, “The language of violence is invisible; the answer too”; “Safe totems”; “Detect and act” and “Barriers”, make proposals for tackling the male scourge and the double vitimization of immigrant women.