Feminist organizations called rallies across the Spanish state on Friday night in response to the wave of femicides in recent days. With slogans such "If they harm one of us they harm all of us", hundreds of protesters took to the streets of several cities to show support for victims of sexist violence. In Barcelona's Plaça Sant Jaume, the virtual entirety of the city's feminist movement issued an "urgent call to protest against all femicides" at 10pm this Friday night.
The protesters, mostly women, extended their indignation to all cases connected with gender-based violence, but in particular were moved by two cases which have shocked society, one involving two small girls in Tenerife, who are both thought to have been murdered by their father, and the killing of a 17-year-old woman by her partner in a town near Seville, and coinciding with these events, the entry into a Social Reintegration Centre of Juana Rivas, the mother at the centre of an international battle involving a partner's violence, custody of their children, and her own jail conviction for several offences.
Those who called the Barcelona march state that 1,095 women have been murdered since 2003, 18 of them this year, and that seven children have been orphaned and 38 murdered since 2013.
Protest against sexist violence in Madrid on Friday night / Efe
The Juana Rivas case
At the rally called this evening in Plaça Sant Jaume, protesters began vindicating the case of Juana Rivas, who entered a Social Reintegration Centre to serve her sentence for the abduction of her two children after accusing the father of abuse.
At the same time, the city of Granada was recalling the case of Rivas among its chants: "The judicial system is sexist and patriarchal." It is at a reintegration centre in the Andalusian city where the mother is serving her sentence.
Judit Pellicer
Juana Rivas was convicted of having spent a month in unknown location with her two children in the summer of 2017 in order to avoid complying with the order giving custody to their Italian father, Francesco Arcuri, who in 2009 was convicted of assault on Rivas - and whom she again reported for abuse in 2016.
Her lawyer, Carlos Aránguez, stated that they will continue using all legal avenues to make her time in prison as comfortable and as short as possible, saying that he has "reasons for hope" that the Spanish government will finally grant her the pardon that she has requested.
Justice for the dead sisters in Tenerife
In addition, protesters showed their rejection of the murder of two young girls who have been missing since April in Tenerife, allegedly at the hands of their father, after authorities yesterday found the body of one of them, six year-old Olivia. Her one year-old sister Anna remains missing.
Video: Protest against male violence in Barcelona's Plaça Sant Jaume on Friday night.
According to the latest information, the Civil Guard believes that Tomás Gimeno killed his daughters after drugging them, as Olivia's body, recovered from the sea floor off Tenerife, did not show signs of external violence nor was blood found in any of the tests carried out. The whereabouts of Tomás Gimeno, the father and presumed murderer, are still unknown.
Main photo: Demonstration against femicide in Barcelona / Judit Pellicer