Catalan Equality and Feminisms Minister calls on state to recognise by law all forms of gender-based violence

She recalls that the Catalan legislation, which the PP had challenged in the Constitutional Court, already included the vicarious violence of the Tenerife case

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Rally yesterday in rejection of recent sexist crimes across the state — Demonstration yesterday in rejection of recent gender-based crimes throughout the state. Miquel Codolar / Acn

BarcelonaSpain has to promote a law that expands and recognises all forms and areas of gender-based violence, among them the vicarious violence that the murder of the two girls from Tenerife at the hands of their father reflects, in a crime that also sought to harm the mother and ex-partner of the aggressor. This was defended this Saturday by the Minister for Equality and Feminisms of the Catalan government, Tània Verge, who urged the state to speed up the transposition of international law, which already provides for this and other forms of gender-based violence.

Verge has recalled in statements to Catalunya Ràdio that the Catalan law (17/2020) already incorporated this "range of violence" against women, a comprehensive approach that ran into the Constitutional Court (TC) after the PP interposed an appeal. The minister has assured that the Government is working to respond to the high court's appeal and has urged the Spanish government to transpose international regulations and follow the path of the Catalan law. "The state law continues to recognise geneder-based violence as that suffered by the woman of the partner or ex-partner, and this makes it very difficult to activate some mechanisms and collect other assumptions in the criminal field", she stressed.

"An abuser does not have different faces, an abusive father cannot be a good father", Verge insisted. She added that the judicial world must also review the conceptions of family decisions and take these aspects into consideration when it comes to assigning custody. "Not doing so is institutional violence against women", she said.

On this type of violence, she believes that state legislation should also recognise it and cited the case of Juana Rivas, who was admitted to a social reintegration centre on Friday to serve the two and a half year prison sentence imposed on her by the Supreme Court for not having returned her children to their father, who had been convicted of abuse.