One more year, institutions and social groups mobilized yesterday against sexist violence. On the occasion of the international day, a minute of silence was observed, manifestos were published, there were various concentrations of rejection and some marches in memory of the more than a thousand women murdered in Spain as a result of this scourge.
In the act of the Government of the Canary Islands, at the headquarters of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the President of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, reaffirmed his commitment to “continue providing all the human and economic resources that are necessary to combat sexist violence against women and minors ”, in their“ fight for a fairer and more egalitarian Canary Islands ”. Torres conveyed that the regional Executive will attend to prevention, awareness and assistance to women and minors who suffer abuse and survive them every day. This year, the femicide has taken the lives of two women in the Archipelago (Josefina and Josefa) and two minors (Anna and Olivia), whose mother, Beatriz, has been murdered “while alive,” Torres recalled.
Since the official count of victims began in 2003, there have been 98 women and eight minors murdered in the Canary Islands in this area. More data: in the first nine months of 2021, between January and September, sexist violence generated 11,477 calls to the attention service for women victims of gender violence of 1-1-2 and in the second quarter 2,280 complaints were filed. “The Canary Islands is the fourth autonomous community with the highest rate of victims of gender violence in Spain, almost 21%. And they are not numbers that are accumulating, they are minors and women violated, abused, annulled, persecuted and murdered ”.
There are currently 4,449 active cases on the Islands in the VioGén system, under police surveillance, of which 56 are girls between the ages of 14 and 17 who are threatened by their partners or ex-partners. “Gender violence is a social evil that multiplies, amplifies and worsens in the face of any tragedy,” said the president, “as was verified during the period of isolation due to the social and health crisis of COVID-19 and as we sadly return to verify by observing what happened recently in La Palma, where attention to women for situations of gender violence has almost tripled since the beginning of the volcanic eruption in September of this year ”.
The Minister of Social Rights, Equality, Diversity and Youth, Noemí Santana, drew attention to the fact that in the last year the murders due to sexist violence have been reduced: “It is still insufficient. Unfortunately, with the murder of Anna and Olivia, all of Spain has known what vicarious violence means, that which seeks to harm the mother through minors ”. The artist Ida Susal performed the songs Bellas and Can be. In addition, a group of minors painted a mural together with Belén Déniz Martín (BelDenMar). In this edition, it was chosen as the motto for 25-N ¿Y tú qué pinttas? That my reality is not blank.
MANIFESTATION
Hundreds of people demonstrated yesterday in the Plaza del Adelantado, in La Laguna, and, despite the rain, under the slogan We are outraged, to raise their voices and ask for policies to stop a scourge that leaves a woman murdered every six days in Spain. A demonstration that started at seven o’clock in the afternoon, after a performance, in which it was staged that the policies on gender violence are “wet paper”, and that traveled the streets of the city until reaching the Church of the Conception. In this place, a manifesto was read denouncing the malfunction of public policies and urgently calling for a response to violence of all kinds suffered by women.
A march called by the 8-M Feminist Platform, whose spokesperson Elisa González told DIARIOS DE AVISOS that “we took to the streets because the sexist violence does not stop despite the legislative process and because the inaction of the policies, which are specific measures and not long-term, they don’t work and they don’t penetrate society ”. An appointment in which the Platform for the Defense of Public Pensions in the Canary Islands was also present. His representative Elvira Olmo pointed out that “violence is in all areas” and that for that reason “we have to fight and go out to the streets, so that they listen to us.”
With cheers and banners, in which you could hear and read phrases like It is not an isolated case, it is called patriarchy; We are not afraid; Women in the fight; It is not no, or My body is mine and I decide, hundreds of people (women, men, youth and children) took to the streets to ask for “a real change”. Something with which the president of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Pedro Martín, declared to DIARIO DE AVISOS that it is “a reality that has not just changed” and that it is necessary to combat the phenomenon every day: “It is everyone’s problem, that must be faced together to eradicate it ”.
