Committee declares 'crisis' following rise in gender violence in Spain and blames a lack of reporting

Spain's minister for equality Ana Redondo has warned of a "crisis" in gender violence and has said that "the most difficult months are approaching, the summer months, when we know that 30% of gender violence murders take place". The minister added that the authorities are "on maximum alert".

She was speaking at the end of a committee meeting which was set up to tackle gender violence murders and said that people close to a possible victim could help to reduce the numbers of women being killed. "In only three of the cases (17%) had there been a complaint. This is an essential factor because we are talking about under-reporting."

She accused the opposition party the Partido Popular (PP) of talking "about false reports" adding "There are no false reports. According to the latest report from the Public Prosecutor's Office, they represent 0.001%, which is an absolutely negligible figure. We need reporting."

Redondo urged those close to a victim "to speak out". She went on to say that in four of the cases analysed (23%) people close to the victim knew about the abuse and in three of the cases analysed (17%) at some point someone called the authorities or the police, sometimes the psychosocial services or the health services.

She said, "We need to reinforce the coordination of the whole system of health services, police services, gender units, government delegations and sub-delegations, so that no information that could be relevant to prevent a murder, to prevent a death."

The "conclusions" offered after a meeting "particularly dramatic because of the number of women killed and children murdered," Redondo said, were based on the 17 fatal crimes of gender-based and vicarious violence (14 women and two girls and one boy) in 2025 that occurred in April, May and June.

After a three-hour meeting on Thursday 10 July, Redondo continued: "Often the victims have friends, acquaintances, family, work colleagues. When the work environment knows or may have indications of the situation of gender violence that a woman is suffering from, it cannot evade the duty to help. It cannot evade their duty to help and this is important". She said that work colleagues of a woman they suspect to be a victim of abuse should call 016.

The minister offered other statistics from this period. "Of all the cases analysed, 71% of the abusers and murderers are Spanish. This means that the majority of the aggressors are Spanish. It must also be said that 57% of the victims are Spanish," Redondo said. "We would like to refute the fake news that the aggressors are mostly migrants.

Another factor "detected" in the "vast majority of the cases analysed" is that of "overlapping vulnerabilities", such as economic vulnerability, dependence on toxic substances, alcoholism, mental health problems, living in rural areas with greater isolation or being a migrant woman without a family protection network. "We must be very aware of the situations experienced by women who are subjected to male violence," Redondo said.

Finally, she pointed out that the problem of repeat offenders was also observed in this concentration of gender related murders. "In many of the cases we are talking about resistant victims and persistent aggressors," Redondo said. "You don't always detect where the real danger is or where there is a serious situation, but we can't leave any of the cases without a follow-up."

In terms of concrete measures, Redondo mentioned the "recently approved state pact". However, although the spike in cases in the summer months occurs every year, new instruments to deal with the situation are still in the pipeline and that her department is going to work with other government departments and legal systems to "establish specific mechanisms to monitor all the cases and try to close the cracks through which these murders escape". She concluded, "We have a reliable system which saves lives on a daily basis."