Main Orantes was killed by her ex-husband José Parejo on December 17, 1997. In recent weeks he described decades of mistreatment on Canal Sur, recounting how he lived with the person who became his executioner, how he obtained a divorce but remained bound by the court’s decision.
This murder altered how Spain viewed sexist violence, a turning point noted by Concepción Dancausa, who at that time led the Institute for Women and advised the Community of Madrid on Family, Youth and Social Policy. She recalls that moment as a sharp shock to public perception.
Dancausa adds that gender violence had not been a prominent topic in the media up to that point. Reporting was scarce, many cases were dismissed, and there was a troubling tendency to question whether the woman bore some responsibility for what happened, a view she says persisted for too long.
Newspaper archive of the Orantes case
The newspaper archive shows a similar pattern in Ana Orantes’s case. There was intense discussion before the last act of the tragedy. On December 17, a national paper noted that the victim’s televised appearance provoked the anger of her husband.
José Parejo claimed that the incidents occurred while he was cleaning farm machinery and that Ana Orantes insulted him, claiming she attacked and set fire to her own spouse. He presented his version as a defense.
María Escudero, who oversees the provincial center of the Andalusian Women’s Institute in Granada, where Orantes resided and where she met her end a decade and a half ago, told EFE that some media figures sought to justify the killer or downplay the severity of the persecution.
Escudero criticized media practices that blamed the victim or treated gender-based violence as a private affair. It was common to frame events as family matters or to minimize the impact as if the crime were ordinary.
Under heavy rain, the coffin of the 59th domestic violence victim in 1997 was greeted with applause by onlookers. A well-known print outlet referred to Ana Orantes in ways that underscored the private, domestic nature of the crime.
A national TV report described the event as utterly reprehensible, while another newspaper ran a sensational headline about turning a former girlfriend into a torch after years of abuse, labeling the incident under the events column.
Francisco Fernández-Cascos, then Vice President of Government, characterized Orantes’s murder as an isolated act carried out by an eccentric rather than a societal problem.
Progress in institutions
Escudero explained that at the time of Ana Orantes’s murder the public could not yet see the event as a signal of a structural issue in society. The tragedy helped push the private into the public agenda, forcing a national reckoning.
Three months after the murder, in March 1998, the Government approved its first action plan against domestic violence, a move noted for recognizing that violence against women had moved beyond private spheres into the public domain.
Dancausa emphasizes that a sensitization process began, with information campaigns on television and in schools, along with media-focused studies and training programs. She notes that as a result, at least 11 laws were modified to address violence against women more effectively.
Legislative reforms and new regulations
The next major step was the 1999 Criminal Code reform, which defined psychological violence in the domestic context as a form of abuse. The Criminal Procedure Code was also updated to ensure that ill-treatment could be prosecuted ex officio, without a victim’s complaint.
Article 48 of the Penal Code restricts approaching or communicating with the victim, their relatives, or anyone the courts have ruled against, under all circumstances.
In 2002, the PSOE introduced a bill against gender-based violence, but it did not advance due to opposition from the People’s Party.
In 2003, a new law established the Protection Order for victims of domestic violence and allowed judges to take interim civil and criminal measures within 72 hours of receiving a complaint about sexist violence.
That year, the community began counting victims of gender-based violence, reaching 1,174 identified cases. The comprehensive Law against gender-based violence would finally pass in 2004 under a socialist government, introducing aggravated grounds by gender for offenses involving injury, ill-treatment, and degrading treatment. It also expanded protection mechanisms for victims, including compensation, free legal aid, or access to shelter resources, to prevent battered women from having to live with their aggressors, a fate that had haunted Ana Orantes.