The desperation of the agents on the front line against sexist violence: "It is impossible to protect the victims with who we are"

• Interior Protocol will reinforce surveillance of abusers and will involve the victim's environment

• Equality Irene Montero admits that there are no "magic wands" to prevent sexist murders and calls for more resources and training

The experience of the Civil Guard agents who fight against sexist violence is inversely proportional to the perception of Fernando Grande-Marlaska, who is agitated by any allusion to the manifest deficit of the staff.

The members of

have been warning for a long time that they are not enough to meet the needs of the victims, neither in number nor in material means.

With a catastrophic closure of 2022 -11 women murdered in December- and the disastrous entry into 2023 -three crimes in one week-, the imperfections of the system collided with the ministry, reviving critical voices in the special teams that the minister does not incorporate into the equation.

An agent of this group from the Armed Institute recounts for

the reality of some units strangled by circumstances for which the numbers do not come out in time or form.

"We are overwhelmed, there are a lack of agents, we do not reach everything and in the end, unfortunately, the victims are the ones who pay for it," he laments.

The VioGén team from the outskirts of the province capital to which it belongs - this example can be extrapolated to all of the country - is made up of three agents for a population of close to 60,000 people.

At this time, as revealed, they have

to review, follow and attend to.

The limited working hours -from Monday to Friday morning and afternoon and on Saturdays and Sundays only in the mornings- complicates the development of the performances and also diminishes unity since the person who does the weekend rests two days a day .

"For practical purposes there are usually two of us and this happens in all the teams in the country, so many days are exhausting in a field as delicate as this one," he specifies.

Its task: collect the complaint from the woman who comes to the post, follow up on the victim and the aggressor -through telephone calls and personal interviews- and, finally, carry out a risk assessment.

That is the end of the function - due to a question of capacity - of those who are the first step in the fight against gender violence and whose conclusions the follow-up depends on.

We are overwhelmed, and the victims suffer

Once these procedures have been carried out, the surveillance based on the danger that the specialist agents have detected corresponds to their colleagues from

, a unit that has other tasks and that, like them, is also under minimum conditions.

If the VioGén team establishes the level not appreciated, a patrol goes to meet the victim at least once a month.

In case the risk seen is low, the visit occurs once every two weeks.

When it's medium, Citizen Security troops come once a week.

If it is high, they go once a day and if it is extreme, surveillance is 24 hours and, in those cases that are usually residual within the universe of ill-treatment, the agents go in plain clothes.

The Citizen Security patrol carries out counter-surveillance combining it with any altercation related to their work, such as a robbery, a fight or a bank robbery, for example.

“They neglect their duties and, when they cannot be in two places at the same time, a patrol from another demarcation comes, leaving their area unguarded and there is a risk that it will not be attended to with the urgency that VioGén's counter-surveillance requires.

It is the fish that bites the tail".

The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska (left), and the General Director of Coordination and Studies, José Antonio Rodríguez González.EFE

«It is impossible to carry out comprehensive protection in conditions for all the victims with whom we are.

Completely impossible », he warns.

Many of the VioGén troops have been transferred from Citizen Security and have been trained, as he indicates, "in a three-day online express course."

"There is no specialized training, as it should be, for a problem as serious as this, full of intricacies, and in which a lot of awareness is needed with the victims," ​​he denounces.

Nor do they have, he assures, the necessary material means.

"When we go to do personal interviews at a house or a cafeteria, we have to request the camouflaged cars from other units and the computers we have to process the issues are inherited from other offices."

The civil guard warns that the situation is far from being redirected if more places are not created in the Armed Institute.

"As long as the workforce is not increased, there will continue to be murders," he says.

Immediately afterwards, the expert in sexist violence expresses a regret shared, he says, by many of his colleagues.

“We feel totally frustrated.

The first ones concerned are us with everything that happens and the fear of what may happen in the future ».

We have to request the camouflaged cars from other units

The agent delves into the problem and returns to the same claim that has been hovering over the

for years .

«The only solution is to reinforce the Civil Guard staff in every way.

It is not worth removing agents from one site to put them in another because that way we will always be lame.

There is a manifest deficit of agents in the Corps and very few patrols to address the criminal reality that we have in general.

The civil guard, however, is realistic and assumes that "ideal" protection does not exist.

"We know that there are situations that are impossible to control but we also know that we cannot continue like this."

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