Accents of Europe

Thousands of women executed for witchcraft in Europe await rehabilitation

Audio 7:30 p.m.

Anna Göldi (or Göldin).

© Wikimedia Commons/Patrick Lo Giudice

By: Léa-Lisa Westerhoff Follow

2 mins

They are often the great forgotten in history, these thousands of women accused of witchcraft between the 15th and 18th centuries in Europe, tortured and then generally executed in public places.

In Scotland, an association has been fighting for two years to rehabilitate the memory of these women and have them pardoned.

And in Spain, the Catalan regional parliament has just adopted a resolution, a text which aims to repair the horror and oblivion of these thousand women who were victims of a “misogynist persecution” between the 15th and 17th centuries.

Catalonia is considered the cradle of the witch hunt in Europe, where it began in 1471. Report by Elise Gazengel.

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In Europe, one of the last known victims of this horrible practice of witch-hunting is called Anna Goldïn.

This Swiss woman was beheaded in 1782, officially, for having poisoned the daughter of her employer.

But the “last witch in Europe” is also the first to have a museum dedicated to her,

Direction the United Kingdom where the Metropolitan Police of London has been shaken in recent months by a succession of cases and scandals in which women were often the target.

To the point of revealing a misogynistic culture too long tolerated within Scotland Yard.

And one of the consequences of these revelations is that London women feel unsafe and unprotected by their peacekeepers.

What strategy should be adopted then?

This is the report by

In Turkey, more and more businesses display their electricity bills in their windows.

All this to protest against soaring energy prices in the country.

Because since January 2022, prices have doubled or even increased by 124% in certain sectors.

Many Turks therefore no longer manage to pay their gas or electricity bills.

Opposition leader Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, 73, made it a political gesture: he called for civil disobedience and stopped paying his electricity bills himself.

He is our European of the week, his portrait signed

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(Rebroadcast from February 22, 2022)

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