With not many hours remaining until the end of December, the final month of the year can already be considered tragic, with more than two murders per week due to gender violence. It's necessary to go as far back as 2008 to find a higher total, of eleven fatalities due to sexist crimes. You don't need to have any political malice towards the Unidas Podemos party and its minister of equality, Irene Montero, to conclude that the law of 'only yes means yes' has not worked. The executive who prepared and processed it, the legislature who passed it and the judges who had to apply it and interpreted it as they wanted can all be held responsible to one extent or another. That's not important. What is indisputable is that Spain has a problem of maximum gravity that will not be solved with speeches and more or less incisive tweets. Nor with empty statements in which the public authorities declare themselves to be more feminist than anyone else and then, when it comes to the truth, their behaviour and attitudes leave much to be desired.
It is obvious that much more can and must be done to stop this ongoing slaughter of women. If the law is not good, let the parties stop fighting among themselves and correct it. The public cares little about whose fault it is and what we want is to turn this situation around. Urgently, without further delay. That the protection chain for victims takes action and functions diligently. Also preventively. Starting with a certain social passivity that we have seen in an alarming way these last few weeks with cases, in Catalonia, of great impact and to which a response is being given at snail's pace. It is clear that it is necessary to feminize all parts of society where parity has not been reached or where there are still enormous centres of resistance. But I insist, are we taking measures to protect those who are attacked?
Are the Mossos, our adjacent police force, allocating the human resources that are necessary, acting with the speed that some of these cases require and coordinating quickly with the corresponding courts? Because in these cases, a perpetrator at large is not exactly the same as a pickpocket or a car thief. It is all crime, but the urgency and social sensitivity are not the same. All this, before even entering into the partisan protection that happens when the criminal is someone who can be colloquially considered one of yours. No one is free from not having done so in the past, but the time has come to demand greater firmness from everyone. It's not good enough for the case to be serious if the injured party is your adversary and yet you try to keep a low profile if the situation is the opposite. Everyone must make a reflection; the media, too.
A person from whom I feel very distant, and with whom I disagree on almost everything, the Spanish defence minister, Margarita Robles, made a statement this Thursday that I fully subscribe to: "Sometimes we make too many laws, and it's not so much a problem of laws, what fails is reality." And this is none other than the murder of 3 women in less than 24 hours, in a grim December in which a woman has died every three days. It is clear that the experts will say, and they will be right, that it is necessary to start with the schools and educate differently. That to tackle the problem in depth you need to go to the root. But we don't have that much time and the problem keeps getting bigger and bigger. It is necessary to strengthen police surveillance of aggressors and to work with victims who are more reluctant to report - they exist and it must be acknowledged that this happens. But when there are solid and verified allegations, let's not put the problem to sleep over a tabletop. Because, I reiterate, time is also important.