Last year, 67 women were murdered in
Spain by their current or former husbands
or boyfriends. 3 weeks into 2005,
four women have already been slain.
Nobody knows how many thousands
more suffer regular abuse from their
partners, since many Spanish women,
fearing for their lives and their livelihoods,
may never come forward.
It is this situation that the newly
elected Spanish government plans to
change. At the end of last year, the
Socialist-led parliament enacted a farreaching
series of laws to combat violence
against women. The laws not only
increase the penalties for domestic violence,
but also shorten the time it takes
to get a divorce-from more than
2 years to less than 6 months.
The government has also pledged
more money to shelters, to improve
training for doctors, psychologists, and
judges, and to fund a public education
campaign in the press and schools.
The laws are among the first of their
kind in Europe, not just because they
penalise perpetrators, but because of
the emphasis on prevention. One of the
key components of the legislation is
education of health professionals.
Spain's medical community had long
ignored the problem of domestic violence,
says Francisco Orengo, a psychiatrist
who specialises in treating abused
women. "Until fairly recently, doctors
saw it as a personal problem. They
thought they were responsible for gastroenteritis
or cardiac arrest, but not for
social problems. At most they would
send the women to social workers."
With the passage of the new laws, the
Ministry of Health will help doctors and
other medical professionals recognise
signs of domestic violence, such as
eating disorders or depression. It will
also teach them how to intervene and
seek specialised social and legal help.
Currently, the Ministry of Health is considering
proposals on how to develop
specialised training programmes and
how to make facilities and counselling
more accessible to abused women.
Additional training in domestic violence
is voluntary at the moment, but it
could be mandatory in a few years, says
Francisco Toquero Delatorre, the Vice
Secretary of the Spanish Medical
Association. "About 4 years ago there
was not the sensibility there is today
among doctors. These days doctors
recognise it is a public-health problem."
Spanish society as a whole is only just
beginning to recognise the problem,
says Enriqueta Chicano Javega, president
of the Progressive Women's
Foundation in Madrid. Chicano, who
worked with parliamentarians to craft
the legislation, says that under the
Franco regime domestic violence was
dismissed as a "crime of passion".
Women could not even have a bank
account or travel without the permission
of their husbands. Women gained
rights in the 1980s, says Chicano, "but
the rest of society hasn't moved on".
The Spanish Church, one of the most
conservative Catholic establishments in
the world, has vowed to fight the
Socialists' reforms. Church representatives
attribute domestic violence to
sexual liberation and the fact that so
many women are now working. "This is
the opinion of our bishops, that this
constant increase of violence against
women is due in good part to the
decline of the traditional family", says
Agustín del Agua, a spokesman for the
Bishops conference. Legalising abortion,
he says, is "unthinkable".
Supporters of the new laws emphasise
that domestic violence should not
be dismissed as a particular product of
Spanish machismo. "This is a problem
of chauvinist culture, but it's not only
here. It is happening in other European
countries", says María Virtudes
Monteserín Rodríguez, the Socialist
party spokesperson for the
Parliamentary Committee on Women's
Rights. She cites a recent survey by the
EU that found that despite their long
histories of gender equality, some
Nordic countries have equivalent rates
of spousal abuse as Spain.
Meanwhile, there is growing public
recognition of domestic violence in
Spanish popular culture. Last year, the
best picture award in the Goyas, the
Spanish equivalent of the Oscars, went
to Te Doy Mis Ojos (I Give You My Eyes), a
story of a battered woman who confronts
denial in her family, the authorities,
and in herself.
Orengo, who trains doctors and
nurses to recognise signs of domestic
violence, says that his first goal is to
explain to his pupils that domestic violence
is a public-health problem. Then,
he says, he wants to help expose
affected women to the new treatment
centres, and "give them the sensation
they can do something".
Samuel Loewenberg