Lottery lives: Spain’s gender violence epidemic
Spain begins summer with one of the worst days on record for gender violence.
The Lotería de Navidad is one of the great institutions of life in Spain. Christmas lotto jackpot FOMO is unbearable for many and, this summer, Spaniards will once stand in line below the throbbing sun to buy tickets, or decimos, while on vacation — because you never know where the luck could land.
The December 22nd televised draw is a surreal spectacle. Nerve-wracked school children screech out numbers and cash amounts like fingernails raking across a chalkboard. Unlike other countries where the winner takes it all, in Spain - like most aspects of life here - it’s more about the collective, sharing. It’s about the ilusión, the hope and excitement, of winning one of the cash prizes together with family, colleagues at work or friends in the local bar.
This week, however, a different set of numbers hangs over Spain like a brooding, bloated cloud ready to burst with summer pain:
19 - women murdered by male partners/ex-partners in 2024 as of June 30th.
53 - the average number of annual gender-violence deaths over the past five years.
1,263 - women murdered by partners/ex-partners since records began in 2003.
9 - children murdered by their father or mother’s partner during the first six months of 2024 (more than the entirety of 2023).
These are numbers without jackpots or winners — just losers. Lost mothers and daughters, lost sisters and friends. Lost futures. Stories cut to shreds by maniacal men.
Spain’s gender violence epidemic
The final weeks of the school year are for daydreaming about days that never end but always vanish too soon.
But the long, dreamy Spanish days as June fades into July turned into a nightmare for three families during a vertiginous 24 hours of savage brutality. “Three killers, six dead in the last 24 hours,” wrote Isbael Valdes in El Pais. It was one of the worst days of gender-based violence in Spain since records begin.
Here is a summary of what happened:
Las Pedroñeras (Cuenca): A man with a restraining order murdered his ex-wife (30) and two children, son (8) and daughter (3).
Zafarraya (Granada): A man murdered both his ex-partner (20) and her mother (45) before committing suicide.
Fuengirola (Málaga): A man strangled his partner (76) to death before attempting suicide.
For me, it was during December 2022 when I sat up and took notice of the prevalence of gender violence in Spain. It was impossible not to.
Counting down to Christmas, the evening news opened every second night with another woman’s dead body, another vigil, another burial. In 31 days, there were 13 murders.
It was the worst month for domestic violence on record. “Six women murdered in the space of five days, including a heavily pregnant woman, rounded off a dark December in the never-ending nightmare of male violence against women,” wrote El País. “The fact that more than half of the victims had previously reported their killers indicates that the mechanisms of prevention and protection are not working properly.”
The pregnant woman was María Elena. Murdered by her mother’s ex-partner in a small town northwest of Toledo, her two children watched the life leave her body. Medics were unable to save the baby — it was due to be born in a matter of days.
Bang in the middle of the holiday period, the traumatising events made me think about all the Christmases these women would never see and mundane, inconsequential things like the Christmas lotto excitement they wouldn’t get to share with friends and family ever again. Their stories ended with the 2022 on their tombstones.
No one factor can explain Spain’s gender violence epidemic. Different experts have pointed to economic instability, drug and alcohol abuse, and the psychological strain on society during and after Covid-19.
But this is something that goes much deeper.
To understand why more than 1,260 women have been murdered by their partners or ex-partners over the past 20 years, Spain must confront a sinister undercurrent that has permeated into the attitudes and behaviours of generations of men.
Sociohistorical factors cultivated during an oppressive dictatorship cannot be overlooked. “In our culture an absurd idea of love still persists, that of submission,” wrote Joana Bonet in La Vanguardia. In Ghosts of Spain, Giles Tremlett detailed how Franco’s Civil Code ordered that “A man must protect his wife, and she must obey her husband.” He also cited a chilling passage from a church guide distributed during the Franco regime advising brides-to-be: “When he gets angry, you will shut up; when he shouts, lower your head without reply; when he demands, you will cede, unless your Christian conscience prevents you…To love is to endure.”
In recent years, killers have ranged from an octogenarian to a teenager and every decade in between, clear evidence that these misogynistic values didn’t suddenly dissipate once Franco relinquished his grip on Spain in 1975. It also demonstrates that beauty in the eye of the beholder may fade, but the threat of violence endures.
This societal rot cannot be papered over. Nor can Vox, Spain’s far-right political party, pin this problem on immigrants.
A letter to the editor published in El País read:
“If you feel the continuous need to know where I am and who I’m with…If you think your love is so intense that you can’t imagine your life without me…If you think that I’m yours and the thought of seeing me be happy with somebody else makes you lose control…If my family or friends make you feel insecure because you think I need you less…You have no idea what it means to love.”
For some men, the thought of their partner leading an independent life is a direct threat to their authority. It goes against their idea of what a woman should be. Some are unable to square archaic attitudes with a new reality. “In the mildest scenarios, this female independence provokes discomfort,” wrote Spanish author Elvira Lindo. “In violent cases, it translates into abuse. Sometimes death.”
The price of progress
Spain has made major strides in the last 20 years to become a safer, freer place for women. It was, according to Amnesty International, a pioneer after the Socialist government passed a historic law in 2004 to tackle gender-based violence.
The landmark moment was brought about by the deaths of women who were failed by both the system and society. One name still weighs on Spain’s collective consciousness: Ana Orantes.
13 days after appearing on TV to recount the horrific abuse suffered during a 40-year marriage, Orantes was killed by her ex-husband José Parejo in the village of Cúllar Vega, near Granada. “Parejo beat her, tied her to a chair, doused her in gasoline, then set her aflame while she was still alive,” wrote The New York Times. It was one of the most brutal cases of domestic violence the country has ever seen. Had laws been in place to protect women from domestic violence at the time, she might still be walking the streets that now bear her name across Andalucía.
The 2004 laws made it easier for women to report violence. It stiffened sentences for offenders and made it harder for them to come into contact with their victims. New courts would specialise in domestic abuse cases. And bloody murders would no longer be filed using vague and meaningless language like “crimes of passion.”
Recent equality ministers such as Irene Montero have been political punchbags for everyone to the right of the current progressive government, taking blows in parliament so that fewer women do behind closed doors. Progress is being made. In 2021, for example, 37,235 protection orders were issued. In Malaga, a man was found guilty of raping his wife of 25 years. After refusing to fulfil “her duty,” the culprit beat the victim and forced himself upon her. The court ruled that a married woman should have the same sexual freedom as any other woman. Before Spain knew the name Ana Orantes, such a judgement would have been unthinkable.
Meanwhile, Spain’s far-right party, Vox, has fought to repeal the 2004 law on the argument that all victims should be treated the same, man or woman. Blinded by staunch anti-feminism, they overlook the violence, discrimination, sexism, and sexual harassment that women in Spain still face in 2024. A Vox MP lamented the outlawing of catcalling in public, claiming that it promoted “hatred of beauty and of men.”
Her argument seemed to suggest that sexual intimidation and disrespect towards women on the street couldn’t possibly manifest into something much uglier down the line. Worryingly, in a September 2021 survey, one in five men aged 15–29 believed that male violence against women did not exist. For some, it was an “ideological invention.” Almost half believed that gender violence was not a serious societal problem. Education around the area of gender violence is failing. It’s also impossible to ignore the huge traction that the far-right’s potent anti-feminism rhetoric enjoys across social media platforms.
Much more to do
In We don’t know ourselves, Fintan O’Toole wrote about a curious phenomenon in Ireland: the unknown known. It applied to many aspects of Irish life: from clerical sex abuse and oppressive institutions like the Magdalene Laundries to political corruption. “Ours was a society that had developed an extraordinary capacity for cognitive disjunction, a genius for knowing and not knowing at the same time.” For too long, gender violence was one of Spain’s most shameful unknown knowns.
While no official statistics were kept, it was easy for barbaric violence to, as O’Toole puts it, “drift in the breeze, always in the air but never settling on firm ground.” Without numbers, there was no accountability. Without modern vocabulary, there could be no real awareness. Nonetheless, the most recent frenzy of gender violence shows that the laws and mechanisms in place to protect women need significant fine-tuning. More resources must be directed to education and support services.
But as long as Spain remains so politically divided, the lives of its women will continue to feel like a lottery.
