During the night from Saturday to Sunday, a man killed his wife in Estepa (Seville) then committed suicide. This is the last case of gender-based violence recorded in our country and the second of the year in the province of Seville.
The unbearable flow of sexist assassinations, or other types of violence against women, is a reality which, however, continues to be denied by the extreme right, while its government partners in different administrations, the Popular Party, surprise by making certain decisions as we approach 8M, International Women’s Day, or in this case 25N, International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
This year, in Toledo, there will be no demonstration of the Local Women’s Council this Monday, November 25. And there won’t be any for the first time in 30 years. This is a “historic decision” and a “unilateral decision” on the part of the PP and Vox government team of the Toledo City Hall, as denounced by both the IU and the PSOE and the city’s Progressive Women’s Association.
In the last few hours it has become known that there will be no protest march to denounce violence against women and demand equality policies for its complete eradication.
The decision was communicated by the Councilor for Social Affairs, Inclusion, Family and Elders, Marisol Illescas, after sending a WhatsApp on Friday afternoon to the organizations and political groups that are members of the Local Women’s Council.
According to the representative of Izquierda Unida in the Local Women’s Council of Toledo, Elisa Fernández, they were informed “unilaterally”, “ignoring and lacking respect”, of the cancellation of the demonstration which is traditionally convened every November 25 by this municipal body,
It only took you a year to eliminate a demonstration protesting 30 years of history in Toledo
Elisa Fernández
— Member of the IU and the Local Women’s Council of Toledo
“It only took you a year to eliminate a 30-year-old protest in Toledo,” he said in a statement in which he said he did not give “credence” to “manners.” Elisa Fernández rejects the argument put forward to eliminate the demonstration: some works on the rise of Real del Arrabal Street – along which the march would take place – although in recent days vehicle circulation has already been authorized.
A gesture which, they say, adds to the precedent of last year. It was Carlos Velázquez’s first time as mayor of Toledo after his pact with Vox in the city council and “he was not present” at the November 25 march. This year, they criticize, “there is no longer even a demonstration”.
“The objective of this government is to dismantle decades of progress in rights and freedoms”
The Municipal Socialist Group of Toledo City Hall called it a “serious setback” in equality policies. There are precedents. As soon as they arrived in local government, PP and Vox eliminated the Ministry of Equality.
Last summer, a motion from the Socialists called for its recovery, but it was rejected by votes against Vox, but also against the PP.
On Friday, during the municipal plenary session, the lack of unanimity once again prevented the approval of an institutional declaration within the Toledo City Council for the 25N rejecting gender-based violence. And it’s been five years now. To this, the socialists remind us today, are added, among other things, “the invisibility of the LGTBI collective, the banning of the rainbow flag”. A few months ago, an episode experienced during a municipal plenary session went viral when the mayor refused to display the LGTBI flag and asked a local police officer to remove it.
Today, say the socialists, with the elimination of the 25N protest march, “they clearly show the objective of this government: to dismantle decades of progress in terms of rights and freedoms”.
“The decision to boycott the International Day Against Gender Violence is not only a betrayal of the women of Toledo, but a direct attack on the dignity of the victims of gender-based violence and those who work every day to eradicate it” , denounced the vice-socialist. spokesperson Ana Abellán, to emphasize that this 25N, “the mayor, in the service of a negationist extreme right, is trying to silence the clamor of those who are fighting against a scourge which has cost the lives of 40 women so far This year.
For Abellán, “the elimination of the 25N march is a shameful act that reveals the true face of this government: a government that scorns feminist achievements and abandons its responsibility to protect women. “His mockery of the Local Women’s Council, a body that for 30 years has been a bastion of dialogue and proposals, is not only a lack of respect, but an attempt to silence the voices that defend equality.
“From the PSOE we demand that the mayor and his team immediately rectify these intolerable decisions and we remind them that the fight for equality is not negotiable nor can it be the subject of political marketing with Vox.”
We will not allow any organization, institution or political party to use its power to make invisible a social and structural scourge that constantly costs women their lives.
Nuria Cuevas
— President of the Association of Progressive Women of Toledo
Criticism also comes from the Toledo Progressive Women’s Association. Its president Nuria Cuevas criticizes that both the mayor and the sector councilor “prevented” the demonstration under the pretext of some work.
The march, according to IU, will be replaced by a “commemorative event”, in parallel, at the Corral de Don Diego in Toledo. These facts show, according to Elisa Fernández, that “co-governance with a party that denies sexist violence has too much weight in our municipal council and imposes priorities, without integrating feminism and the fight against gender violence”, censorship in reference to Vox without citing it.
“Gender violence has always been a problem relegated to the private sphere that the feminist movement has managed to make visible with great effort, to denounce and position it in the public sphere,” adds Nuria Cuevas, who affirms that women’s organizations “we are not going to consent “That no organization, institution or political party uses its power to make invisible a social and structural scourge that constantly costs women’s lives.”
They demand that the government team of Toledo City Hall “fulfills its mission and applies equality policies that duly take into consideration the killings of women due to gender-based violence and of their sons and daughters due to indirect violence, as the cruelest form.
Following this decision, IU encourages citizens to “pursue their demands” and participate in the demonstration called by the feminist movement Plataforma 8M, which confirmed that it will leave from La Vega towards the Plaza de Zocodover at 6 p.m.
