(Madrid) Thousands of people demonstrated across Spain on Thursday for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, as the fight against gender-based violence is a national priority in the country.
In Madrid, purple masks, hats and scarves, the color of the feminist movement, were predominant in the parade.
At the head of the procession, a banner proclaimed: “Fed up with macho violence against women.” Solutions now! “While the demonstrators sang in particular” we are not all there, it misses those which were assassinated “.
“At the global level, it is a scourge […] It is time for the patriarchal violence to end against our bodies, our lives and our decisions, ”said Leslie Holguin, thirty-year-old student and actress.
“We demand an end to prostitution and demand an end to assassinations, ill-treatment and rape,” said Maria Moran, a 50-year-old civil servant.
Demonstrations have also taken place in other cities of the country such as Barcelona or Valencia.
The fight against gender-based violence is a national priority in Spain, which in 2004 adopted the first law in Europe making the victim’s gender an aggravating circumstance in the event of aggression.
“We cannot allow women to be murdered because they are women,” Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez insisted on Twitter, whose government, which has more women than men, claims to be feminist.
“We will only be a just society when we are done with all kinds of violence against women,” he added.
The country, which has a powerful feminist movement, has a public observatory on gender violence which has recorded 1,118 murders of women by their companion or ex-companion since 2003, including 37 in 2021.
In order to include all feminicides in its statistics, the government recently announced that it would count from January the “chauvinist assassinations” committed by men who were not the companions or ex-companions of the victims.
Many voices have been raised around the world to denounce violence against women on the occasion of this international day.
“Violence against women is a global crisis. In all our neighborhoods, women and girls are in danger, ”insisted the Executive Director of UN Women, Sima Bahous, in a video, while according to the UN, nearly one in three women in the world once suffered physical or sexual violence.
“The various forms of abuse that many women endure are cowardice and degradation for men and for all of humanity. We cannot look away, ”Pope Francis said for his part.