At the time of writing this article, and in what we have of the year 2026, fourteen women have been counted as murdered due to gender-based violence in Spain. In one of the cases, the victim's 12-year-old daughter was also murdered. In another, as the aggressor set fire to the building where the victim lived, it also caused the death of two more women, the victim's mother and a neighbor. With these fourteen cases, the number of women murdered in Spain due to gender-based violence rises to 1,357 since 2003, which is the year the count began. For those who like data, in three of these fourteen cases the victim and the murderer were partners; in the other eleven crimes, they were ex-partners or partners who were separating. Also, in only three cases, both the victim and the murderer were foreigners; in the other eleven, both were Spanish nationals. By autonomous communities, three crimes were committed in Andalusia, two in the Valencian Community, two in Aragon, one in Madrid, one in Castile and León, one in Navarre, one in Cantabria, one in Extremadura, one in the Canary Islands, and one in Galicia. Before anyone claims victory, the fact that there are none in our home doesn't mean anything: Catalonia is one of the communities with the most victims, and the Balearic Islands is one of those with the highest percentage of femicides in relation to the population. What I've just written has become routine information in the news bulletins, repeated every time a new murder is added to the list. 1,357 since 2003; 14 confirmed as of March 23rd, a week ago. Often, to avoid the coldness of bare numbers a little, femicides are compared to other famous massacres, such as victims of terrorism. It is a way of lamenting the scarce sensitivity —or denialism or demagoguery— with which many sectors of society, and some political parties (especially the far-right and similar ones), take this tragedy.There is another more direct comparison: what would many of those who deny the seriousness of the issue say if the tables were turned and we were talking about men murdered by women? How would they see it if instead of feminicides —women murdered precisely because they are women— we were talking about masculinicides? It would be about men murdered for being men: for wanting to separate from their wives or girlfriends, for going with another woman, for too often meeting friends to watch football at the bar.If this happened (it has never happened habitually, as the inverse) the social alarm would be so enormous, the wave of whinging and victimhood would be so strident and overacted (especially on the part of the city's most macho men) that it would become unbearable. Let's imagine it for a moment: 1,357 guys murdered since 2003 by their wives. With blows, with knives, with hammers, set on fire, thrown from the balcony, with shotgun shots, run over with the car. Extremely violent deaths, committed with premeditation and cruelty. How would you see it?

It is the lowest figure in recent years, but it is still "unacceptable." A woman was murdered due to domestic violence in Spain every 7.6 days last year, in 2024. This is underlined by theReport on fatalities from gender and domestic violence within a couple or ex-couple which was made public this Monday morning by the Observatory of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) in Madrid. There are 48 fatalities in total, of which 25 percent lost their lives in crimes that occurred in small municipalities with fewer than 25,000 inhabitants, according to the report.

In the last eleven weeks six women have been murdered by their current or former partner in Catalonia. Since the end of the last state of alarm, this number has increased, and this year so far there have been as many cases as in all of last year: a total of eight. The latest still does not appear in official statistics because Antonella, the woman murdered in Sant Vicenç de Castellet, is yet to be officially identified. The body was so badly burnt a DNA test will be necessary, delaying the process. In addition, the police have opened another investigation after a woman was murdered in Sabadell. The body was located on Tuesday at a home and the police have been unable to identify the victim due to the bad state of the corpse.