Concentration in front of the Madrid City Council in November 2019 in which posters were held with the names of women murdered by the hand of their partners in Spain since 2003 Samuel Sánchez
They kill them mostly on Sundays and Mondays.
An extensive X-ray of 15 years of sexist violence, which analyzes the 928 murders registered between 2003 and 2017, opens up new hypotheses about these crimes that leave a woman murdered every six days.
The report
Temporal analysis of murders of women due to gender violence in Spain over 15 years
, commissioned by the Government Delegation against Gender Violence prepared by the Carlos III Health Institute, rules out that there is a contagion effect in these crimes, that is, no causal relationship has been found between the murders that are concentrated in three or four days in a row.
The analysis, which was presented this Friday, does reflect that almost a third of the murders occur around the weekend, mainly on Sundays and Mondays, when coexistence increases.
The vast majority had not reported, as is known from previous studies, but just over one in 10 (13%) had protective measures in place when they were attacked.
That is, the system failed them despite having sounded the alarm.
The report highlights that 17% of cases are concentrated in summer and 3.8% are at Christmas.
The months in which the most murders have been registered are January and July, although there is no significant difference with respect to other months for investigators to consider a pattern, as they do see in the accumulation of 29% of the cases - almost one of each. three — on weekends.
“During the weekend there are changes in the dynamics of the couple relationship that imply an increase in violence against women,” explains Fernando Vallejo, one of the researchers in the study, who adds that there is also a greater increase during the weekend of other indicators of violence, such as calls or complaints.
“There is more violence because there are more hours in contact and that can lead to more situations of disagreement.
This type of criminal does not accept the discrepancy, ”says Amparo Díaz, a lawyer specializing in sexist violence.
On weekends, women "can try to do activities with their families, with their friends," which can anger their aggressors and trigger situations of violence.
"In cases where there is no coexistence, during the weekend the aggressor has more time to follow the victim and attack her."
2020: the year with the fewest murders but no less sexist violence
Annual crimes have been declining from 71 in 2003 to 50 in 2017. The murder rate has dropped, according to the report, at the rate of 3% per year.
Asked if this decrease is due to the approval of the comprehensive law against gender violence, in 2004, and its implementation in subsequent years, Belén Sanz, another of the authors of the study, said that it would have to be evaluated, but “ the truth is that since that date they have been decreasing ”.
In 2020, the last year closed but not the object of this study, 45 women were murdered by their partners or ex-partners.
This decrease (it is the year with the fewest murders in the historical series) has to do with the exceptional circumstance of the pandemic, which makes that year not comparable with the rest.
The Government delegate against Gender Violence, Judge Victoria Rosell, recalled that in the last year what has increased is the so-called “control violence”.
During the confinement, the women have been totally under the control of their abusers, who have known at all times where they were and what they were doing.
The analysis responds to measure 173 of the State Pact against Gender Violence, approved in 2017, which calls for studies "on the accumulation or accumulation effect of murders in a short period of time of two to four consecutive days."
Of the 5,479 days analyzed in 15 years, the report indicates that there have been 29 specific periods of between two and four days in which the number of murders was unusually higher (between one and five victims in that period).
They are 12% of the victims compared to 88% who are not part of "these striking or unusual episodes," according to the study.
Another 2019 report ruled out the existence of a contagion effect, understood as "the criminal act that takes as a model or is inspired by a previous crime that has been made known by the media or has been described in fiction."
In that investigation, carried out in June 2019 by the Ministry of the Interior, 655 murders of women by their partners or ex-partners between 2007 and 2017 were analyzed. The study, collected by the Efe agency, stated: “There are no relevant statistical results that support the existence of an imitation effect in gender murders in Spain ”.
The average age of the deceased is 42.3 years
There is no victim or a typical aggressor, gender violence occurs in all ages and social and economic conditions. But the analysis of the data shows that the average age of the woman killed by sexist violence is 42.3 years. The report establishes significant differences by nationality, with 45.6 years in the case of Spanish women compared to those born abroad (36 years). Although the crime rate declines after 44 years of age, there is a rebound in women after 65. The average age of the aggressors is 46 years. 31% of them were foreigners and, in this case, the average age was 39 compared to 49 in the case of Spaniards. One in five committed suicide after committing the murder.
