Main Orantes killed 25 years ago By her ex-husband José Parejo on December 17, 1997. A few weeks ago he He told about 40 years of mistreatment in Canal Sur He said that he lived with his executioner, who managed to get a divorce but had to live with the court decision.
that murder changed the perception of Spain sexist violenceIn the words of Concepción Dancausa, then director of the Institute for Women and adviser on Family, Youth and Social Policy of the Community of Madrid, who remembers that history as a “shock”.
Dancausa says that until then, gender violence “had no significance in the media.” “There was very little talk, cases were exceptionally dropped, and even questioned whether the woman was at fault,” he told EFE.
Newspaper archive of the Orantes case
The newspaper library shows that the latter also happened to Ana Orantes. “There was a strong discussion before the last action”On 17 December, a national newspaper reported that the victim’s televised appearance “caused the anger of her ex-husband”.
“José PA explained that the incidents occurred while he was cleaning farm machinery and he was insulted by Ana Orantes. attacked and set fire to his wife“He told me he sang the killer’s version.
María Escudero, who runs the provincial center of the Andalusian Women’s Institute in Granada, where Orantes lived and was killed in 1997, told Efe: some media killer will “try to justify”exempted from aggravating the persecution in punishment.
“Most of the media blamed her,” Escudero complains, noting that this is not the only questionable practice used when talking about gender-based violence. It was also very common to refer this to the family and private sphere, to minimize what happened, or to treat events as if they were ordinary.
“Under the rain, The coffin of the 59th victim of domestic violence in 1997 received long applauseAnother well-known print media referred to Ana Orantes in this way during her funeral, alluding to the “domestic” nature of the crime.
One national television spoke of “an event that is utterly reprehensible”. Another newspaper, with the headline “Turning his ex-girlfriend into a torch after 40 years of abuse”, with the news in the “events” section.
For the popular Francisco Fernández-Cascos, then Vice President of Government, the murder of Ana Orantes was “an isolated case, the work of an eccentric.”
progress in institutions
Escudero said that when Ana Orantes was assassinated, “she is still It was not possible to convey to the public that we are facing a structural problem of the society. He said he needed to stop being private in order to occupy the forefront of the public agenda.” “Thanks to Ana, people are facing what happened,” she says.
Three months after the murder, in March 1998, Government approves first action plan against domestic violenceHe points to Danish. At the beginning of the text, it was said, “Today, violence against women has exceeded the private dimension and has become an attack on society.”
Dancausa says, “A sensitization process has begun, in which information campaigns are carried out in television and education centers, and media-oriented studies and training courses are encouraged”, emphasizing that “up to 11 laws have been changed in terms of legislation”. “.
Legislative reforms and new regulations
The next step was to amend the Criminal Code of 1999. He defined psychological violence as: a kind of bad treatments in the domestic area. The Code of Criminal Procedure has also been amended to ensure that ill-treatment is prosecuted ex officio, that is, without the need for a complaint from the victim.
Likewise, Article 48 of the TPC prohibits approaching and communicating with the victim, their relatives or anyone whom the courts have ruled under any circumstances.
In 2002, the PSOE registered a bill against gender-based violence, but it was not passed for processing due to votes against the People’s Party. who was ruling at that time.
A year later, in 2003, the Law was passed, which regulates the Protection Order for victims of domestic violence and allows judges to take interim civil and criminal measures within a maximum of 72 hours of receiving a sexist violence complaint.
That year, victims of gender-based violence were also officially counted, reaching 1,174 today.
The comprehensive Law against gender-based violence would finally come in 2004 with the socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
The unanimously adopted norm introduced aggravating grounds by gender in offenses of injury, ill-treatment and degrading treatment. In addition, protection mechanisms for victims, such as compensation, free legal aid or shelter resources, thus prevent battered women from having to live with their aggressors, as happened to Ana Orantes.