I rewrote these first lines 180,517,089 times.
It’s too much for my mental boat. I tried to be objective, unequivocal, informative, but I couldn’t. Let the matter be fulfilled.
In the same week that Barcelona announces the creation of an Innovative Center for New Masculinities, aimed at educating and disseminating information to promote “different imaginaries of what it means to be a man” in different fields (work, culture, home, schools etc.), a woman is found charred in a field about 50 kilometers from Barcelona, killed by her ex-husband.
So far, there have been 29 murders due to male violence in Spain in 2021. Almost half of these deaths have taken place in less than a month. More precisely, just after the end of the state of emergency, on May 9, which restored mobility on the national territory.
Experts warn of the trend of a boom in cases of male violence in this post-pandemic opening period.
The apparently reduced number of allegations and incidents during containment, they say, is likely due to the fact that the partners then had more “control” over their victims, since no one could leave the house.
The murder of sisters Anna and Olivia, aged 1 and 6, by their father, Tomás Gimeno, rocked Spain in 2021 (Reproduction)
Additionally, precisely because they are more closely watched during lockdown, many women may have found it difficult to seek help, despite an aggressive campaign by the Spanish government throughout lockdown, encouraging complaints.
In any case, 80% of the fatal victims of male violence in Spain have never lodged a complaint.
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Along with the charred girl in the story above, an Argentinian woman only 30 years old, the body of a man has been found.
Also a 2 year old girl, alive, with slight burns.
This child will carry with him the indescribable trauma of having witnessed the murder of his mother, followed by the suicide of his executioner, his own father.
The couple were going through a divorce. The victim had recently filed a complaint for verbal abuse.
Another recent case that rocked the country is the murder of two sisters, Anna and Olivia, aged 1 and 6. So far, only the body of one of them has been found on the coast near the island of Tenerife, where the crime took place at the end of April.
They were killed by their father (whose body, three months after the crime, is still missing, although it is believed that he committed suicide soon after the crime), in an act called here “violence by power of attorney “- when a person wants to harm another by mistreating others. In this case, the girls, whom he shared custody with his ex.
The latter, in fact, had already suffered other episodes of verbal and physical violence, but chose never to report them, for fear of harming the family environment and the children.
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It was not only episodes of violence against women that made Spanish news.
Homophobic violence has also intensified in the country. The murder of a young man of Brazilian origin in Galicia has become the most unfortunate symbol of a time when, after the pandemic came out of the pandemic, we became a divided country.
Samuel Luiz Muñiz, killed in an attack in Spain (Reproduction / Facebook)
Politically, initiatives such as the Center for New Masculinities in Barcelona or the new Spanish “trans law” pre-approved in June, signal intentions of openness and relative progress.
Thanks to this new law, among other achievements for the trans and LGBTQIA + community, gender self-determination will finally be recognized, that is to say that a person will be able to choose to change sex from the age of 14 without having to present a thousand files and other paranaues who, in practice, were there to hinder and stigmatize the process.
On the other hand (and how many sides!), Spain is also the country where we have witnessed the strengthening of an extreme right party like Vox, with a homophobic, sexist vocation and what else than you wanted to stick.
Its latest feat was a xenophobic campaign that attacked the so-called “menas” (acronym for unaccompanied foreign minors, many of whom are immigrants from countries like Morocco and Syria) with the words: “un mena, 4 700 euros per month; his grandmother, 426 euros of pension per month ”.
Spanish far-right Vox’s controversial campaign in Madrid compares aid to retired immigrants to ‘nationals’ (Reproduction)
Vomiting, hecatombic, horrible. And false, as several Spanish press vehicles have revealed. To begin with (and without going too far), more than 70% of the children in the reception centers are Spanish and not foreigners. Blah.
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In Barcelona, the Center for New Masculinities “is a new step in our commitment to claim our pride as a diverse city,” Mayor Ada Colau (26) said last Monday. By the way, the city’s first female mayor, in office since 2015.
“Here, hate speech and any form of discrimination or lgtbiphobic aggression like those which have multiplied in our streets lately are not welcome (…)”[esses] hate speech and sexist and homophobic attacks are linked to a patriarchal model that we must revise ”.
The new center, he says, will seek to encourage “a much more diverse, rich and happy image of possible masculinities, generating positive references and moving away from that old and outdated idea that men have to be tough or aggressive.” Ah, mayor. Nice words. Novo Macho has a lot of detox coming up.
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