Itziar Prats, mother of Nerea and Martina, aged six and two respectively, lost her daughters on September 25, 2018, victims of the hatred of her ex-husband and their father.
From that deep pain the beautiful and intense friendship with Isabel Gallardo was born.
The latter learned of the tragic event through the media and implicated Prats in an idea that was in his head.
Together they managed to turn suffering into a movement of solidarity, love and struggle:
The heartbeat of the butterflies
, with the aim of denouncing and showing the rejection of gender violence with the elaboration and weaving of violet butterflies: “Our educational and social project, aimed at children above all, is built to achieve a better world where to give impetus to a change in society, and violent acts are no longer perceived as normal.
Faced with any type of violence, including sexist violence, we want to raise awareness and make visible, and on the other hand, convey that you should be educated from childhood on values of respect and equality.
It owes its name to the Mirabal sisters who also called
Las Mariposas
and by the values that surrounded them.
They were assassinated on November 25, 1960 for opposing the dictatorship of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo.
As a result, the butterfly effect that continues to occur in society, ”says Prats.
According to Gallardo, this phrase by the psychologist Jean Piaget perfectly defines the origin of his plan: "Destruction as the cause of birth."
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Knit butterflies with purple yarn
In the project started more than two and a half years ago by Itziar Prats, a psychologist, and Isabel Gallardo, an administrator, neither money nor politics are mixed.
They do not receive subsidies, they do receive donations of thread, safety pins and a lot of love and involvement from the people to weave the butterflies with violet thread (the color of feminism), make them fly and spread their message: “We try to make every little gesture count.
We give butterflies as a symbol of the fight against gender violence, to make it visible and that we keep it in mind on a daily basis.
We gave conferences with universities, recently on "Care and self-care", and some congress to explain our project, with the possibility of other psychologists participating.
We had meetings in a haberdashery - now, with the pandemic, we have made a couple
online
- with women, even some men, to weave butterflies.
“Different educational centers have carried out workshops explaining our project and the values that we consider so important, and professionals from other equality associations have collaborated.
I have been able to be present in one of them ”, determines Gallardo.
Prats speaks of different violent behaviors as a fairly silenced issue that is usually sheltered within the family.
“When developing the project and with the tissue of the butterflies, we believe that in cases of children who have suffered gender violence in the family, bullying or abuse by elders, schools should act.
We believe that these issues should be an obligatory part of the educational system, that they be integrated into the curriculum: inclusion of values of equity, equal rights and respect.
This would help us to identify and not normalize.
Each one of us is examples in different fields and we influence the rest of society ”, Prats remarks.
The Gallardo and Prats project has grown and they have managed to take steps that they had not even imagined reaching.
“We have a lot of demand for butterflies.
Our project has grown to the level of repercussion.
We did not imagine being on television.
People are very supportive, ”Prats emphasizes.
Keep living to help others
Itziar Prats occupies her life with the project.
His family is another of his main supports.
“It is good for me to keep busy and not think.
Also, I get a lot of support.
My family (parents, brothers and nephews) gives me the strength to continue.
I can't stay locked up at home.
When I feel discomfort and pain I would feel like it, but I don't allow it.
I think that is not the way to solve anything, ”says Prats.
This woman continues to receive professional treatment with a psychologist and a psychiatrist.
She states that she does not like to take medication, but adds that she is not yet ready to stop.
“The treatment helps me.
In the intervention, sometimes I have a hard time because it means remembering hard moments, but it is the only way to heal.
I go little by little with my ups and downs, giving myself time and doing things, ”he highlights.
The Itziar Prats process has been very difficult.
There has been talk of failures in different bodies.
As he maintains, and with published data, no one has acknowledged anything: not the Ministry of the Interior, not the Ministry of Justice, not the Prosecutor's Office, not the mayor of Castellón, not the judge.
In his first statement, a month after the murder of his daughters, Itziar stressed that he would fight to the end to try to resolve responsibilities.
“I laugh for not crying or screaming.
No one has said that they were wrong.
The mayor of Castellón said that we were all responsible.
That is not recognizing anything at the individual level.
No one has contacted me either.
The Ombudsman in Madrid has supported me and is the only one who assured that no abuser can be a good father.
But that is not being taken into account.
We continue to see children who have to go with their father even when the mother has filed a restraining order that has been granted, ”says Prats.
In 2014, the Istanbul Convention or Istanbul Convention was approved (it is a convention of the Council of Europe with the aim of fighting violence against women and domestic violence), and Spain ratified it.
For Prats, many things were missing in his case: a follow-up of the case or that his daughters did not have protection measures.
The bloody event took place in September 2018. It is from March 2019 when in VioGén (a tool that is applied to determine the risk and try to prevent more deaths of women due to sexist violence, and that Prats gave Bajo ) the lethality of minors is taken into account regardless of the mother.
“It seems very sad to me.
In the summer of 2019, when everything was supposedly in force, in Spain another child died of sexist violence.
This death also had to have been prevented.
The law will be fine, but I don't see it being applied.
Children are not taken into account.
They are not asked.
Minors express much more and are not as manipulated as is believed.
There are many stereotypes that must be broken.
Changes must prevail in gender violence courts, starting with the training of judges, prosecutors ..., and that they do not train among themselves because the distorted perception will continue ”, Prats emphasizes.
Prats wants to make very clear the need to protect minors in situations of conflict in the couple, in the same way that the procedures in separations and divorces are expedited.
“Children have a voice.
In my case, neither my daughters, my ex-husband nor I received any psychosocial assessment, and in Castellón there was that possibility.
The judge did not have enough material.
But there it remains.
Even at the judicial level, services for the care of victims of gender violence that depend on the municipalities are not taken into account, ”says Prats.
“It is difficult for a woman to report if she knows that moments later she must return to her attacker and be under the same roof.
There is much work to be done and much to improve.
Learning again is much more difficult than learning the first time and we must get there ”, he concludes.
As the interpreter Rozalén recites in what is already a hymn associated with the fight against gender violence,
The Violet Door
: “(...) But I drew a violet door on the wall, and upon entering I freed myself as it unfolds the sail of a ship.
I woke up in a green meadow far from here.
I ran, I screamed, I laughed.
I know what I don't want.
Now I am safe ”.
Lucía del Prado, president of the Filia de Amparo al Menor Foundation, knows the case of Itziar Prats from what the media have disclosed and joins her pain, as a mother and a caring woman.
He also shares with her the vision of the malfunctioning of the judicial system.
“At the Foundation, we see very serious cases every day and we hear heartbreaking stories from children and young people.
We have been working for 10 years in the prevention and intervention of risk situations of minors.
We have made great achievements.
However, they are nothing compared to existing needs.
We frequently suggest projects that involve changes, advances and updates regarding the child protection system, but we do not receive even a quarter of what we need financially to start it up.
Many projects go ahead thanks to volunteering, ”says Del Prado.
For Del Prado it is logical to think that minors are still not considered a priority, “they are not even on the wish list.
The president of the Filia Foundation calls for specialized professionals, plus family courts with resources and the ability to streamline the files.
"Alternative solutions to help families such as parental coordination is a very valuable resource for detecting high-risk situations in the minor and the rest of the family," emphasizes Del Prado.
As he relates, in recent years, the Filia Foundation's Parental Coordination Intervention Service has detected several cases of gender-based violence where the victims were not aware.
“If the entities and foundations that defend minors do not raise their voices, who will?
Cases like that of Itziar Prats should never happen, and this requires immediate responses.
This has nothing to do with the color of political parties.
What is unavoidable is the involvement of the central government and the regional governments to such an urgent demand ”, expresses Del Prado.
As Itziar Prats affirms with a thread of voice impregnated in a perpetual pain, although serene: "I am still alive and I have to continue forward."
His path will continue, spreading his wings like a butterfly and without fear.
The same are his two small butterflies that with their flight lead the imperturbable march of others in the face of a social scourge that we wish to be extinguished.
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