SPANISH people call it violencia de género. This year in Spain, 44 women have lost their lives. Six have died in a grimly rising tide as 2025 draws to a close.
Jennifer is the latest.
This 30-year-old Colombian woman had settled in a small village named El Viso del Alcor, halfway between Sevilla and Carmona.
Last Saturday (6 December), her partner Ismael stabbed her to death and set their home on fire. She leaves an 11-year-old daughter. The child was not present during the incident.
The house in El Viso del Alcor where Jennifer died.
In the same week, in Torrijos (a town near Toledo) a 39-year-old woman was killed by her ‘ex’.
Rosemery had actually asked for help in October, specifically contacting the Torrijas Women’s Centre, but she didn’t go so far as denouncing her former partner to the police. Her three children, all minors, are now motherless.
The day before Rosemery died, there was another fatality, this time in Alicante.
Neighbours raised the alarm at five in the afternoon on 2 December when they heard screams coming from the home of Oriana on the calle Cánovas del Castillo. Her brother-in-law attended the scene.
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Knowing that Oriana (34) had recently filed for divorce, and getting no answer to his shouts, he kicked open the front door. He found two bodies – her husband had murdered her and then hanged himself.
María Ángeles had two teenage children. She herself was 45 years old. On the last day of November, her partner cut her throat and then threw himself off the roof.
Though she was entered on the ‘VioGen’ register (Spain’s system for monitoring violence against women), she had not been considered a high risk. She had never made any specific allegations against her partner to the police.
Back in Andalucía, in Campillos, Concha was strangled to death by her partner on 26 November. They were both in their 20s. What makes this killing especially unpleasant was that Concha had left the marital home some months earlier.
She was living with her father at the time of the attack. The killer appears to have waited until her father went out in order to exact his vengeance inside the father’s house.
As we all know, age is not a defining factor when it comes to violencia de género. María Victoria was 60 years old when, two weeks ago, her neighbours phoned 112 (the generic emergency number).
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They had heard banging and screaming emerging from her house on calle Trébol in Rincón de la Victoria, just outside Málaga. When emergency services arrived, María was already dead.
Before this appalling two-week wave of violence, Spain wasn’t doing too badly. Only 42 women had been killed this year (forgive the irony of ‘only’), compared to 47 at the same point in 2024.
Police now think that the 2025 figure might end up being the worst of the decade so far.
The house in El Viso del Alcor where Jennifer died.
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