Just 72 hours ago a man killed his ex-partner in her home in Rincón de la Victoria, Málaga. She was 60 years old and María Victoria, once officially confirmed, will enter the statistics as the 39th victim of this year, the 1,334th since official documents exist in 2003. Against these attacks and in defense of the victims, to protest against the growing denialist current and ask for greater institutional protection, thousands of women and men marched in this 25-N through the streets of dozens of cities in Spain. “We are in a moment where, instead of moving forward as a society towards an egalitarian society, we are going backwards,” summarized one participant.
In Barcelona, with 1,400 participants, according to the Guàrdia Urbana, Alba N., 18 years old and a student, did not want to give her surname for fear that her attacker, a friend of her mother, could locate her or her little sister. She went to the demonstration alone: ”I want to believe that things can change; if I can’t believe it, what do I do?” And in Madrid, where the pulse of feminist organizations is being measured, the government delegation estimated around 5,000 people between the two demonstrations called. This year, as for three years now, the movement has expressed itself separately. Madrid was also where the rupture was first visible, on March 8, 2022.
A crack that arises from transnational lawcontinued with differing positions on prostitution, and was fueled by the consequences of the Sexual Freedom Act – sentence reductions and releases for those convicted of sex crimes. In the background there was something else: the unrest in the PSOE due to the entry of Irene Montero, of Unidas Podemos, as Minister of Equality with the first democratic coalition government in an area occupied until then and exclusively by the socialists.
Although that portfolio has been held by socialist Ana Redondo since 2023, the division continues. And it didn’t just happen in the capital, although that’s also where the political environment weighs heavily on this issue. The governing party, the PSOE, has called into its ranks the event organized by the Madrid Forum against violence against women (Forum 25N) and the Madrid Feminist Movement (MFM), critical of the trans and abolitionist law on prostitution and for which the Delegation estimated the participation of 2,000 people.
Redondo participated first, and then moved on to the one convened by the 8M Commission – which the delegation estimates at around 3,000 people -, which defends the participation of trans women and in which both abolitionists and prostitution regulators are present, and in which Ione Belarra, general secretary of Podemos, participated. Irene Montero, the former Minister of Equality, who usually accompanies this march, spent this 25-N at the European Parliament because there was a plenary session.
In Madrid, half a dozen women held up signs calling for Redondo’s resignation over the failure of anti-abuse bracelets known in September. And shortly after, two operators from Madrid’s victim support services asked him to do something about the dismantling due to Community cuts. In her statements, the Minister of Equal Opportunities called for consensus and warned the People’s Party: “Either you are with the State Pact or you are with Vox’s denialism.”
In Seville, political allusions were linked to breast cancer screening in the Andalusian public health system. The protest called in Seville by the United Feminist Assembly – which was attended by around 300 people, half compared to the second march, that of the Feminist Movement of Seville, which was close to 600 – saw the participation of the association of women affected by breast cancer in Seville, Amama, present with a bright pink banner. “There is institutional violence due to delays in cancer screening and healthcare that does not put women at the center,” commented the assembly speaker, Ana Martínez.
Mónica Zuñiga, 45 years old and from the Feminist Association of Gipuzkoa, highlighted in the San Sebastián demonstration “the increase in reports of sexual assaults and, unfortunately, young people who resort to sexist violence to control their partners. This indicates that we are in a moment in which, instead of moving forward as a society towards an egalitarian society, we are going backwards”. According to estimates by this newspaper, around 500 people gathered there.
In Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, near the motto do your part of the Feminist Network of the Canary Islands Ane Sirera Ibarluzea, a 30-year-old social worker, also referred to the younger ones: “Today’s youth tries to break many stereotypes, but deep down and at the base, machismo is still in force.” The former government delegate against gender violence, Victoria Rosell, also participated in the march on the island. “It is necessary to protest this year like every year and every day. Because there is still violence that is part of the system and, above all, because a part of society joins denialism and denialism is the best accomplice of silence and, therefore, of violence”.
The denialist speeches of the far right were one of the focuses of the posters. In Madrid, the National Police had to remove the ultra agitator Vito Quiles from one of the protests while the women chanted anti-racist slogans and for the improvement of the systems of prevention and protection of the victims, which were also part of the axis of demands of the organizations and in the streets, where moreover every woman and every block of the demonstrations brought a message.
At the head of the Barcelona demonstration was a large banner Teixint resistance: victims, lives and rebels against sexist, racist and colonial violence (Weaving resistance: free, alive and rebellious against sexist, racist and colonial violence). Shortly after, another block left, led by migrant women who reported it Immigration law, sexist violence, migrants fightingand who advanced at the same pace as dozens of organized workers. Among them Ada Gamón and her colleagues: “As domestic workers we suffer every type of violence: sexual, moral, work-related. We have to be here; this is also our place of struggle.”
In Valencia, sexist violence was at the center of the protest called by the Feminist Movement, in which the main trade unions and left-wing political parties, as well as feminist associations and entities, participated. Under the motto Prou of violence against gifts. Fartes d’impunitat amb els aggressors (Enough violence against women. Fed up with impunity for attackers), the banner leading the march was carried by the surviving women.
Simultaneously with the start of this march, at 7pm, the València Feminist Assembly and Comparsa La Revoltosa started the demonstration in the Plaza de la Virgen in Valencia, an “open, diverse and combative demonstration to denounce all the violence that affects our bodies, our territory and our lives”. According to the delegation, the Valencian city has around 2,000 inhabitants.
Even in Galicia, in cities like Vigo, but above all in Santiago de Compostela, where around a thousand people participated, the division of the movement was staged with appeals that took place at the same time and in the same place, the symbolic 8M square of the Galician capital, and then started separate paths, with different banners and different slogans. Galician World March coordinator Mulleres attributed this split to “transphobic behavior” that occurred at a previous protest.
And in Valladolid the friends and family of Teresa Rodríguez also participated in the rally, murdered at just 23 years old on 27 October 2022 in Brussels (Belgium) by her ex-partner, a civil guard sentenced to 30 years in prison. Sara Polanco, 26 years old and best friend of the murdered woman, insisted on the “social problem” that sexist violence entails: “And that involves us. Teresa was my best friend and her ex-partner killed her, people must become aware that this really happens”. Rosa Gil, president of the protest collective Themis and aunt of Teresa Rodríguez, goes every year “so that people do not forget the women killed by gender violence, for her and for all of us I have always come and now with more reasons. She and all of them are in our memory”.
With information from Domitila Diez, Carolina of Lima AND Sthepanny Pinzon in Madrid, Lorena Delorenzo (Barcelona), Juan Navarro (Valladolid), Javier Martín-Arroyo (Seville), Mikel Ormazabal (San Sebastiano), Ferran Bono (Valencia), Silvia R. Pontevedra (Santiago de Compostela), Guillermo Vega (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) e Isabel Valdes (Madrid).
The 016 telephone line assists victims of sexist violence, their families and those around them 24 hours a day, every day of the year, in 53 different languages. The number is not recorded on the phone bill, but the call must be canceled from the device. You can also contact via email 016-online@igualdad.gob.es and via WhatsApp on 600 000 016. Minors can contact the ANAR Foundation telephone number 900 20 20 10. In case of emergency it is possible to call 112 or the telephone numbers of the State Police (091) and the Civil Guard (062). And if you can’t call you can use the ALERTCOPS application, from which an alert signal is sent to the Police with geolocation.
