Gender-Based Violence in Contemporary Spain
La Delegación del Gobierno contra la violencia de género defines gender-based violence as “la violencia física o psíquica que sobre una mujer ejerce el hombre que sea o haya sido su cónyuge o haya estado ligado a ella por análoga relación de afectividad, aún sin convivencia” (Delegación 2024). According to the Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE), one out of two women aged sixteen and over living in Spain have suffered gender-based violence (INE 2024). These alarming figures will certainly hide an ever-bleaker reality, given that gender-based violence tends to happen behind closed doors. Many female victims do not denounce the abuse suffered (Gurm and Marchbank 2020: 84–97). Despite Spain’s radical transformation from a patriarchal dictatorship (1939–75) to a more egalitarian democracy (1975–present), the issue of gender-based violence has remained a scourge in contemporary Spanish society, with fifty-eight femicides registered by the Spanish government in 2023 alone (“Datos de violencia” 2023).
In the last decades, there has been a surge in political and public awareness of this social problem of gender-based violence. In 2002 the Observatorio contra la Violencia Doméstica y de Género was founded to address the way this violence is dealt with from within the Judicial Administration. In 2004, the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero passed the “Ley Orgánica 1/2004, de 28 de diciembre, de Medidas de Protección Integral contra la Violencia de Género,” which ratified stiff penalties for men who abuse women. In 2007 the Ministerio de Interior launched the software program “VioGén,” an algorithm that helps the police assess the risk faced by victims of gender-based violence so that protection measures can be put into place. On 14 April 2008, the Ministerio de Igualdad was founded to promote the equality between men and women, and to prevent and eradicate all forms of violence against women. In 2021, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the Spanish government passed Law 1/2021 “de medidas urgentes en materia de protección y asistencia a las víctimas de violencia de género” and in 2022 the Ministerio de Igualdad reaffirmed the “pacto de estado contra la violencia de género” (B.O.E.). More recently, in 2022, the Spanish legislative body has passed a new consensual sex law known as “solo sí es sí,” that is, “only yes means yes.” This bill declares that sexual consent must be explicit, rather than something that can be assumed or given through silence or by default, a necessary move that could classify non-consensual sex as rape (Jeong 2022: 34). Other government-led initiatives include the establishment of a confidential twenty-four-hour telephone helpline for victims of male abuse as well as the creation of the so-called “puntos violetas” (violet spots), places across cities devoted to preventing and eradicating gender-based violence. Spanish media has also paid more attention to gender-based violence, reporting on these matters, and designing campaigns to promote awareness of this problem (Santaemilia and Maruenda-Bataller 2014: 249–70). This increased sociopolitical and media interest has been paralleled by a significant cultural response, with novels, plays, poems, autobiographies, movies, documentaries, and art exhibitions tackling gender-based violence (Cruz 2005: 67; Gámez and Maseda 2018: 11–56; Godsland 2012: 53). Furthermore, universities and schools have also played a role in educating against gender-based violence, with seminars, courses, workshops and even master’s degrees and doctorates focusing on this issue (Monreal et al. 2022: 188–90).
Despite the complex and multi-faceted phenomenon of gender-based violence – the completely different socioeconomic, cultural backgrounds, and personal profiles of perpetrators and victims (Bermúdez and Meléndez-Domínguez 2020: 380-383) – there seems to be a pattern of animal metaphors articulating the discourse of the male abuser. As will be seen, whether in real or fictional accounts of gender-based violence, male abusers often resort to the zoomorphic scenario to conceptualize either themselves or their female victims in the guise of different beasts to exert and even justify their violent actions.