The Ministry of Culture will create an office to assist victims of sexist violence

The Ministry of Culture will promote a unit for “attention and prevention of sexist violence in the cultural sector”, an initiative that was born after the publication two weeks ago in EL PAÍS of an article in which three women accused the filmmaker Carlos Vermut of sexual violence. .

The office, sources from the Ministry confirm, is the way in which Minister Ernest Urtasun fulfills the promise he made on the red carpet of the Feroz awards on January 27: “This department will support any complaint made of abuse. sexual violence or any type of sexist violence.”

That night he noted: “We consider it essential to put testimony at the center and completely reject this type of situation;

"We are going to work for a safe culture for the women of this country."

More information

Three women accuse film director Carlos Vermut of sexual violence

The main objectives of the office, explained by the Ministry, are “to support victims of sexist violence and, secondly, to carry out specific studies to develop protocols and recommendations that respond to the specific needs of each sector and organism linked to culture”.

According to the department, “the intention is for culture to be a safe space for all women.”

From Culture, they advance that this office will receive victims who have not previously reported to authorities such as the Police or Justice.

“We are still waiting to outline the details, but it is clear that we must face the problem in a transversal way, that there are no requirements, that they know that the Ministry has its doors open for those who have suffered all types of experiences,” explain those same sources, who also They emphasize that this initiative is for the entire cultural sector, not just the audiovisual sector.

The Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, with different associations of women in Culture to launch a new line of work in the Observatory of Gender Equality in Culture. Ministry of Culture

There aren't many more details.

There is still no economic memory.

It is also not known what the structure will be, nor how it will fit into the Ministry's organizational chart, nor who will direct it, nor the personnel it will have.

“When we arrived, we detected a lack in the sector; there was no fixed mechanism that would cover this need,” the department points out.

After the publication of the EL PAÍS investigation, they rushed this decision.

“This unit aims to respond to the need to combat sexist violence from the specific specificities of the cultural sector and its different areas.”

To achieve this, “it is intended to work with a multidisciplinary approach, in agreement with cultural professionals and also counting on the feminist associations that are members of the Observatory of Gender Equality in the field of Culture, experts in the prevention of "said violence and the advice of other successful experiences already implemented."

Hence the meetings held this past Wednesday between Urtasun and the Gender Equality Observatory of the Ministry of Culture.

MAV (Women in the Visual Arts), CIMA (Women Filmmakers and Audiovisual Media), Classical and Modern, AMM (Women in Music) and MIM (Women in the Music Industry) also participated in the meeting.

Urtasun is scheduled to attend the Goya Awards this Saturday where he is expected to give more information about this office on the red carpet prior to the awards ceremony.

He will attend Valladolid together with Pedro Sánchez, President of the Government, and Yolanda Díaz, Second Vice President and Minister of Labor.

The ceremony will be partly marked by the publication of the EL PAÍS article, as the Film Academy itself announced when announcing that the hosts of the gala, Ana Belén, Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, known as Los Javis, would dedicate part of their interventions to demand an end to the abuses.

“Yes, a moment has been found [at the gala] to talk about that,” said Calvo, in statements to Europa Press, while Ana Belén pointed out to Efe that “there will be a moment at the beginning of the ceremony to tell, accompany and show solidarity” with the victims.

“It is a structural problem of society” that has to do with “machismo and power,” added the actress and singer.

The three acknowledged that this is a “painful” moment for Spanish cinema.

Coordination with other initiatives

The Ministry's office will be implemented with other initiatives such as, as Urtasun explained at the Feroz awards, “a specific equality plan for culture.”

Now, the Ministry is working on what the formula in which this unit will take shape will be.

“We will be happy to coordinate with other institutions to be more effective,” they say from the Urtasun team.

In the future, a collaboration with the Ministry of Equality will be considered.

Its owner, Ana Redondo, announced, after a meeting with the Association of Women Filmmakers and Audiovisual Media (CIMA), that both institutions will carry out a report on sexual violence and power in the Spanish audiovisual industry, “which aims to lead to the drafting of a public-private protocol against abuses.”

Its intention is that the report can be published in September, during the San Sebastián festival.

And, for this reason, Minister Redondo clarified, after that meeting with Cristina Andreu, the president of CIMA, that her aspiration was to establish “a good diagnosis” about the dimension of the problem: “We want to specify what violence there is, how it occurs and the extent of those abuses.”

This victim care unit has a reference in cinema: the office created by the Catalan Cinema Academy, launched in April 2022 with the support of the Social Rights, Global Justice, Feminism and LGTBI Area of ​​Barcelona City Council and from the Equality and Social Sustainability Area of ​​the Barcelona Provincial Council.

This department against abuse in the audiovisual and performing arts sector completed 13 accompaniment, to 11 victims and two testimonies, in its first year of operation between May 2022 and June 2023.

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I am already a subscriber

_