Domestic Violence

Currently at my internship, I am working on compiling and translating all of incident reports of hate crimes for the ODIHR’s (Organization of Democratic Institution for Human Rights) 2008 summary. During my work with these reports, I have noticed a high number of domestic violence cases, whether it be spousal abuse or other female victims from male aggressors. Quite frankly, the number is astonishing. Likewise, in my household here, we watch the Telecinco news at 9:00p.m., and while I’ve been told it has sensationalist news coverage, almost every night there is a story of how a woman fell victim to her husband, boyfriend, ex-lover, etc.

This theme is not just a story on the news, but it is ingrained into the everyday lives of the Spanish. For example, our housekeeper’s boyfriend stops by the house every day just before lunch, and will jokingly pretend to beat up our housekeeper so that my almost three-year-old “nephew” comes running into the kitchen with a stick in her defense. Though they are only joking, they make quite a production between her screams and the loud slapping sounds. While it is obvious to anyone other than a three year old that they are just kidding, nevertheless it shows how strongly this topic is woven into the fabric of Spain’s society.

I think much of the violence today in Spain is rooted in the mentality that women were men’s property under Franco’s rule. With Zapatero’s gender equality legislation, Spain is certainly in the process of changing this. However, I read an article from December 2008 that said some 400,000 women currently suffer from domestic violence in Spain, and that 1.5 million women have been the victims of domestic violence at least once in their lives. Needless to say, I imagine that this will be a slow change for Spain.