2023-07-04 14:22:55
The suppression of the Department of Equality by the Toledo City Council, as well as the government pact between the Popular Party and the extreme right of Vox, have been the protagonists of the monthly concentration organized by the Local Women’s Council in this city. And it is that the newly appointed mayor, Carlos Velázquez (PP), has not only attended the event but has also read his manifesto, in which he has condemned the sexist murders, the last one committed just 24 hours ago in Navarra, and puts the focus on the importance of eradicating gender violence, a type of violence that his government partner denies.
“It is a hypocrisy of the PP since it abolishes the Department of Equality and agrees with a party of retrograde ideas. It has been a partisan act”, said Mayte García, secretary for Women of the CCOO of Toledo, a union that has organized a protest against the mayor during the concentration.
Upon the mayor’s arrival, a group of women have taken out banners that read “Where is the Department of Equality?” “The PP has dropped its pants in the face of Vox’s retrograde ideology,” they have stressed.
Fifty people have attended this rally, many of them members of the parallel protest, in whose manifesto the mayor has ensured that equality policies are confirmed with facts. “We protest his pact with Vox and to eliminate the council, these are the facts, facts that are backwards and retrograde,” underlined García.
“If there is no Department of Equality, all the budgets that were going to implement measures, actions, tools to promote gender equality and against sexist violence, disappear,” he recalls.
“If there is no Department of Equality, who orders that the policies be transversal? The Councilor for Works?
“Equality is a transversal axis of our policies,” said Velázquez, who despite considering sexist violence as “a scourge” does not specify how they will work to put an end to it. “Only with the unity of all of us can we put an end to it”, a unity that does not exist in his government team. The new corporation, with four Vox councilors, has not fully attended this concentration. As expected, among the attendees was no member of the far-right party.
“Women do not need a council that hides the equality council, but rather real, effective policies with a budget,” claimed Txema Fernández, councilor for United IU-Podemos, who wondered: “If there is no Equality Council, who is in charge of Are the policies transversal? The councilor for works?
As the mayor also stated, the Popular Party “has used this act in a partisan manner” since “it wants to whiten the image of a City Council that has eliminated equality policies at the hands of an ultra-right party.”
“Without a budget, the statements you make are useless,” he warned. “We fear that they will eliminate the Toledo School of Equality, that they will eliminate the subsidies to carry out awareness-raising activities, in fact they have not done so anymore,” she criticizes.
Fernández recalled that the first measure that Vox requested in 2019 when entering the City Council with two councilors was to eliminate the Toledo Shelter in 2019. “Now it is in the municipal government, so we fear that they want to eliminate the Local Women’s Council and equality policies”.
For the moment, the first step has been to make it invisible with the restructuring of councils and the first texts of the Consistory. “In the organization that they have created, the word ‘equality’ is ignored.”
As the councilor explained, the PP and Vox agreements point to domestic violence. “Women mistreated by their husbands do suffer violence, but the one who runs through the park and suffers an attack does not, because her husband does not threaten her. It’s a step back.”
The CCOO Women’s Secretary also criticized this restructuring since “it means putting women back into the home by including them in the ‘Family’ area, it means relegating us to care and having children.” “Why have you not put women in economics or finance? It is a retrograde policy ”, she underlined.
The mayor has not addressed the protesters despite greeting all the people gathered when they arrived at the event.
Concentration organized without summoning the Local Women’s Council
After the Constitution of the Town Halls, as well as the appointment of the new councilors, the Local Women’s Council meets to agree on its members, the calendar of concentrations and who reads its monthly manifesto.
However, this meeting has not been organized by the new government team. “It has not been done because there is no will,” says the IU-Podemos councilor. “It could have been convened on June 18, after the constitution of the City Council, as has been done with other councils but it has not been convened.”
Olga Ávalos, a member of the 8M Platform and current Sumar candidate for Congress from Toledo, also attended this act, agreeing on the hypocrisy of the Popular Party. “Her pact with Vox is a setback and there will be more, we go back to when women were blamed for being mistreated by their husbands,” she warns. “They talk about intra-family, which means that he stays at home, that if he kills you, assaults you, a man who is not a first-degree relative is not considered gender violence,” she explains.
So far this year, 25 men have committed sexist murders. Since 2003, 1,209 women have been killed by gender violence in our country. According to the latest reports from the Ministry of the Interior, last year a total of 17,389 crimes against sexual freedom were committed, 28.4% more than in 2019. Among them, 2,870 were penetrative sexual assaults.
‼️ We confirm the murder of a 47-year-old woman in Navarra on July 1 for alleged #GenderViolence.
???? The number of women murdered by gender violence in Spain rises to 25 in 2023 and 1,209 since 2003. #Not one less #NosQueremosVivas
— Government Delegation. Against Gender Violence (@DelGobVG) July 4, 2023
#received #act #sexist #violence