Pinoso against gender violence

The first Friday of every month the Pinoso Platform against Gender Violence "el Pinós contra la violencia de gènere" stages a silent protest on the steps of the Pinoso Town Hall. It's a low key event with a few tens of people turning up. There's a banner to stand behind and usually someone reads a poem or says a few words.

Someone told us tonight that it's been going on for nearly five years. I have to admit that I've only stood there on about six occasions.

More often than not there is a film shown afterwards with an appropriate theme.

Gender violence - attacks on women by their partners and ex-partners - is a recurring theme on Spanish current affairs programmes and news reports. Spain is not proud of its record on women's deaths. No death goes unreported. The 016 report and helpline is well publicised.

I had a look to see how the numbers compared between Spain, 47 million population. and the UK, population 64 million population.

In Spain from 2009 to present the worst year saw 73 women killed. The "normal" figure is in the mid fifties. Reports of "gender violence" are generally in the 120,00 to 130,000 range. 2015 was a "good" year with around 62,000 reports. 2016 has started badly - three women killed so far.

It was much, much more difficult to find similar statistics for the UK. I did get some reasonably consistent figures for UK deaths. 126 in 2012, 143 in 2013 and 150 in 2014. I didn't find any stats on official UK complaints/reports though there was lots of  horrible information based on surveys and estimates. The only figure I found was one that said there were 887,000 police interventions in 2013/14 in cases of domestic violence which I presume means reports of men attacking women.