August begins with three domestic violence fatalities in less than 24 hours in Spain

August has begun almost as black as July ended. In less than 24 hours three women have lost their lives in Spain at the hands of their husbands. The grisly tally follows the dramatic month of July in which eight women were killed in gender-based violence crimes.

The most recent of the homicides took place on Tuesday, in the early afternoon, in the Tenerife village of Valle de Guerra. According to preliminary investigations by the National Police, a man in his nineties, who may suffer from some kind of psychological disorder, allegedly beat his 91-year-old wife to death.

The circumstances of the death have yet to be certified by the police but the initial hypothesis is that the man may have attacked his wife with a stick. There is no record of previous complaints of ill-treatment.

This attack took place just six hours after another gender-based killing in the town of Pozoblanco, Cordoba. A very nervous woman phoned the local police at around 8am to say that she had found a friend lying on the floor of her house next to a pool of blood.

When officers of the Guardia Civil arrived at the house they found the victims as well as the body of her husband, a man she was in the process of divorcing, next to her and a shotgun. Initial investigations suggest that the 39-year-old man shot his wife, 31, and then killed himself with the same weapon.

The victim had filed a formal complaint against her husband for abuse more than five years ago, but there were no protection measures in place. The couple, who had been married for almost a decade, had three young children, one of whom, aged about three, was in the house at the time of the crime. All three are in the custody of social services.

On Monday, 7 August, a man was arrested shortly after half past five in the afternoon, for allegedly slitting his wife's throat at their home in Almeria.

The couple’s three young children witnessed how their father killed their mother with a kitchen knife and then tried to avoid arrest by using one of the children as a shield in front of the police. There were no previous complaints against him.

These cases confirm that July and August are typical months in which the number of episodes of gender-based violence and homicides increases. In July, there were eight deaths in Spain.

This means that so far this year 35 women have lost their lives at the hands of their partners or former partners, leaving 39 children without their mothers.