Esther Gomez Malaga

Malaga

Updated Monday, March 25, 2024-01:47

María - her fictitious name - is 31 years old and has been trying for more than ten years to leave behind a history of threats and abuse that began as "the typical toxic relationship" when she was still a child and that has led her to repeatedly ask for help from the courts. sometimes due to the fear that her ex-partner could harm her or the people she loves and is closest to. She is a victim of gender violence and one of the 4,637 Spanish women who carry with them, day and night, a

monitoring device

that warns her every time the father of her children approaches within 500 meters, which in her case happens. almost daily.

María is also one of those women who has requested

that her bracelet be removed

. Her alerts go off at any time of the day or night and after her warnings come her phone calls to find out how she is and visits from the Civil Guard, sometimes in the middle of the night. She does not complain about them, "they do their job", but she has a family - she specifies - and "it is difficult to explain to the children why a patrol car suddenly arrives home with its sirens on." Everyone around her has had to learn to live and normalize a situation that is far from normal, she regrets.

Her ex-partner lives relatively close to her, so she takes advantage of any excuse to get "just enough" so that the system jumps and an alert is issued. She then justifies it and since she was only close - and not too close - for a few seconds, "she comes to nothing," she says. María's is one of those aggressors that she has discovered that she can use the tracking device that she is forced to wear

to disturb her victim

and, in some way, be present in her life. The level of anxiety that the situation causes her is such that she can't take it anymore, he confesses to EL MUNDO, "and I'm not the only one," he adds.

The day the court determined that her ex-partner should wear the tracking bracelet, she felt relieved, she admits. She never thought what that would really entail, although "her lawyer already warned me," she recalls ruefully. At the end of the hearing she "came up to me in the hallway and told me: you're going to regret it and you're going to be the one to ask for the bracelet to be taken off." Thus, what at that moment she thought would give her peace and promised security for her and her loved ones, has become

one of her biggest nightmares

. She causes her stress and anguish, doesn't let her sleep and keeps her constantly on edge, she regrets her. "He is the aggressor, but I am the one who lives as if she were on probation with the Civil Guard on my heels."

In Spain, as of March 6, 2024 , more than 4,600

tracking devices

are active .

In Andalusia alone there are 1,654. Valencia follows, with 595; Madrid, with 410; and the Canary Islands, with 360. The community in which the fewest bracelets are in operation is in La Rioja, where there are eleven. In the autonomous city of Ceuta there is only one and in Melilla, none.

The different ministries to which policies related to women have been linked have for years been sponsoring and praising the

benefits of the system

for monitoring by telematic means the prohibitions of approach imposed by the judicial authority in matters of gender violence and sexual violence, known colloquially as "location bracelet".

The objective of this system is to give security to the woman, dissuade the aggressor from approaching her and document the possible violation of the prohibition of approach imposed by the courts. Its activation includes

two smartphones

with GPS, which are given to the victim and the aggressor, and a bracelet with a locator and radio frequency transmitter that the offender will wear - on the wrist or ankle - for the time determined by justice. .

However, for many victims - such is the case of María - the bracelet has become

a sentence

, a forced bond that does not allow them to turn the page and that forces them to live pending their attacker. For them, on the contrary, the system allows them to locate them and maintain the distressing bond that they are trying to break from the very moment they decided to report, explains to EL MUNDO a Civil Guard agent who deals with victims of daily gender violence.

This is how the system works

The operation of the system is simple, when the wearer of the bracelet enters the "fixed exclusion zones" (those to which the court has prohibited him from going, normally where his victim lives and works) or mobile, when he approaches the place. where she is, the devices emit a warning and alert both the victim that her aggressor is nearby and the aggressor that he is approaching - or has entered - a space where he is not allowed to be. When an alarm occurs, it is also received by the management center, Cometa, which activates the

corresponding protocols

and notifies the National Police or Civil Guard so that they can call or go to the place where the victim is and check how they are.

The device gives information in both directions, so that "they know where their aggressors are, but the aggressors also know where they are," explains this agent from the Armed Institute who observes how they violate the restraining orders imposed by the court, they remove themselves the tracking bracelets and try to approach their ex-partners again and again to harm them and confirms what María says, "some of these criminals, more than what might initially seem, use it to

control the steps

of their ex-partners and even to harass them. For him, "the only effective way for them not to attack the victims is for them to be in jail."

A quick visit to the statistics of the Government Delegation against Gender Violence show that in 2023 in Spain

almost 150,000 complaints

were filed for this reason and 58 women were murdered by their partners or former romantic partners. In the first quarter of 2024, seven fatalities have already been recorded. But behind the cold numbers there are real women attacked by men they once loved; There are fathers, mothers, children, brothers, relatives and friends who watch helplessly as they suffer in the face of a situation that has worsened in recent years and which seems very difficult to put an end to.

Among the latest deaths that sexist violence has claimed this year, that of Andrea, a 25-year-old girl in Palmeira (La Coruña); that of Gracia, 49, who was shot by her ex-partner in front of her 16-year-old daughter in Pizarra (Málaga); and that of two girls aged 2 and 4 who were murdered by her father in a farmhouse in Alboloduy (Almería).

In this last case and given the repeated episodes of threats and attacks, the Court of Violence against Women number 1 of Almería had filed a complaint for mistreatment against the alleged aggressor, had issued a

restraining order

of 500 meters with respect to his ex. couple and had ordered that a tracking bracelet be placed on him to prevent him from having contact with her. The trial was scheduled for April 10, but it will never take place. The accused decided to take his life, but not before taking the lives of his two daughters through the loopholes of the law. He took advantage of a moment alone with them that gave him a visitation regime that allowed him to spend time with the girls given that the restraining order was for the mother, not the daughters, say sources close to the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia ( TSJA).

Neither the court's restraining order nor the electronic monitoring device that he was forced to wear could prevent him from acting against his ex-partner. He wanted to cause

irreparable harm

to her victim and so he did: he poisoned the girls and condemned the mother to mourn the loss of her for the rest of her days.

The measures adopted on this occasion, including the bracelet, although well-intentioned and in accordance with the law, were not sufficient.