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María Rivas highlights in A Pobra do Caramiñal the importance of the Travelling Suitcase as a tool to fight against Gender Violence

13/05/2025
María Rivas highlights in A Pobra do Caramiñal the importance of the Travelling Suitcase as a tool to fight against Gender Violence

With that of A Pobra do Caramiñal, the Travelling Suitcase against Gender Violence (MAVI) adds 20 stops in different concellos coruñeses to, through reading, reflect on gender roles and stereotypes The Travelling Suitcase MAVI incorporates 5 books aimed at children and young people and 9 for adults in addition to a diary and a catalogue of illustrations of women from our history drawn by the Galician illustrator Rosa Cabanas, who collaborates with this initiative. The under-delegate recalls that in the province there are more than 2,600 active cases in the police system.

The subdelegate of the Government in A Coruña, María Rivas, highlighted in A Pobra do Caramiñal the importance of the Travelling Suitcase against Gender Violence (MAVI) as a tool to fight against Gender Violence through reading.
She did so during an event at the Victoriana García Martí Municipal Public Library, accompanied by the head of the sub-delegation’s Unit against Violence against Women, Manuela Vilaboy; by the mayor of the municipality, José Carlos Suárez and by the municipal government.

The Travelling Suitcase began its journey in the year 2022 in Vimianzo and since then, it has resorted to 20 concellos, social entities as well as the Social Insertion Center of A Coruña. The next planned stops of the MAVI in the province are Valdoviño and the Association against Gender Violence ALVIXE, of Ferrol.

Through reading, this project compiles texts that promote reflection, awareness and awareness on key issues to achieve a more egalitarian and violence-free society about women, favoring critical thinking in the face of the stereotypes and gender roles that perpetuate these violence and inequalities.

The program began as a single suitcase and currently the Government Subdelegation has 5 suitcases with different contents. “Each suitcase stays at the destination for 3 months during which each concello or entity schedules activities of different types” explained the subdelegate. “From activities in collaboration with children’s schools and educational centers; workshops and reading clubs, crafts around the content of books, talks and even film cycles, to bring reflections on feminism and gender roles to the entire population.”

The sub-delegate of the Government highlighted the municipal nature of this initiative given the fundamental role that concellos play in order for this type of projects to reach the entire neighborhood and especially the population of the more rural areas that have more difficulties to access this type of resources.

For this reason, the concellos can also interact with MAVI, providing copies of publications related to the lives of the women of their villages. “In this way, the women of the province will have the opportunity to meet and make visible the women of other concellos of the province, as already happened in the case of Ortigueira through “With a woman’s voice. Bark” and “With a woman’s voice. Sano Adrián de A Veiga” o en el caso de As Pontes con “La historia de nuestras mujeres. As Pontes 2017 and 2018”.

This trip of MAVI has no return date since the idea is that it can continue circulating in the province and increasing and varying the books that travel inside.

The MAVI in A Pobra do Caramiñal

The Travelling Suitcase against Gender Violence that will remain in Pobra do Caramiñal for the next 3 months has 5 books for children and young people with titles such as “Son una niña rebelde. A diary to start revolutions”, “Princesses also throw themselves off”, “I’m only mine”, “Kike and the Barbies” or “The Diadem of Jan”. In the case of books for adults, there are 9 titles among which you can find “Ethics for Celia”, “Disarming Masculinity”, “Terra de Mujeres”. An intimate and familiar look at the rural world” or “Nothing to lose”.

In addition, with the aim of giving visibility to female references in all areas, since 2024 MAVI has incorporated the collaboration of the illustrator Rosa Cabanas through her project Brave Women, drawn images that in the form of stickers adorn the 5 suitcases and a catalogue of images in each suitcase with their stories.

Finally, this suitcase includes a MAVI diary to collect the impressions of the participants, drawings, suggestions and all kinds of comments that allow to continue improving this project.

VioGen
The Comprehensive Monitoring System in Cases of Gender Violence (VioGén), coordinated by the Ministry of the Interior, has been in operation for almost two decades with a clear objective: to enable the #integral monitoring and protection of women victims and their children in any part of Spanish territory. The protection of victims of gender violence that are part of the system is exercised by the different State Security Forces and Bodies according to the level of risk in each specific case.
At the moment the system has a total of 61 municipalities adhered to that are distributed throughout the Galician territory. A Coruña is the province with the largest number of municipalities attached, highlighting cities such as A Coruña, Ferrol and Santiago de Compostela. The municipality of A Pobra do Caramiñal joined the VioGén System in 2022.
In this sense, the Government of Spain, through the Ministry of Equality and within the State Pact against Gender Violence, provided the city council of A Pobra do Caramiñal with more than 30,000 euros to promote activities that help to combat violence in all its extensions.
In the province there are more than 2,600 active cases in the VioGen system of police tracking, “two thousand six hundred reasons to continue working in a coordinated way between institutions to end gender violence.”