Spain’s #MeToo Movement Takes Off

The Spanish women’s group “La Caja de Pandora,” or  “Pandora’s Box,” a group of 3,000 members who work in the arts, has accused Spain’s institutions of being complicit in protecting abusers, and of having created a structure which allows violence against women to continue.

The recent verdict by a Spanish judge to acquit five men of the rape of a young woman during the 2016 San Fermin running of the bulls in Pamplona, has sparked a national outcry with huge demonstrations across the country.  The five men accused were given a sentence of sexual abuse, which is a lesser offence and differs from rape, in that it does not involve violence or intimidation.  The judge determined that since the victim “kept her eyes closed” during the attack and had a “passive attitude,” no violence was involved.  One of the three judges in the case even voted to exonerate the men completely.

The police who worked the case testified that the images were revolting and that the victim did not participate willingly.  The eighteen year old girl was dragged into a basement landing where she was stripped of her clothes, raped by the five drunken men, who also stole her mobile phone.

The five men involved in the attack call themselves “The Wolf Pack” and come from Seville. The ordeal of the victim was filmed by the perpetrators on their mobile phones in seven short videos where they are seen joking and bragging about their conquest, and which they subsequently uploaded onto their Whatsapp group called “La Manada,” or “The Wolf Pack.”

These videos were used as evidence in the court case.  Other videos on their Whatsapp group show all five men, and on several different occasions, abusing women who seem to be unconscious.

The five rapists, among them a former soldier and a police officer, were given nine years in jail, and are up for parole in just one year from now.  They have declared that they are innocent and that the victim was a willing participant.

Senior politicians and human right’s groups questioned whether the prolonged sexual assault could be anything but intimidation or rape. The Minister of Justice, Rafael Catala, said that he believed that the judge who wanted to exonerate the men ‘should be disciplined.” His statement angered seven Spanish associations of lawyers and judges who signed a statement calling for minister Catala to resign, saying he was ‘audacious.”

The Spanish government has said that it is consulting whether or not the classification of sexual crimes should be updated.

The Carmelite cloister nuns of Hondairriba have joined the #MeToo movement and shown their support for the Pamplona rape victim by opening a Facebook page.  They say they defend with all means available for the right of women to freely say no, without being judged, raped, murdered or humiliated for it.  Their motto is: “Sister, I do believe you.”

However, the #MeToo movement in Spain has not been as pronounced as in other European countries.  Although the #MeToo movement received extraordinary coverage in Spain, the Catalan independence crisis was the main topic of the press when the Weinstein scandal broke.

The #masmujeres campaign in Spain highlights the inequality of women in the Spanish movie industry, and it was created as a direct result of the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal. The Caja de Pandora women’s group has a Facebook page where they share information about their organization with their followers, but they have yet to open a website and formalize their movement.

I have not seen or heard one single female politician in Spain who has stuck her neck out for women’s causes and movements.

In 2012, a Spanish government official who was the chief of an agency that assists Spaniards living abroad had to resign after he said that “laws are like women, they’re meant to be raped.”

Action against gender violence must immediately be taken in Spain so that there are more protocols, pacts and legislation to protect and enable women’s rights of dignity and freedom.

If there is no word for an act, you cannot name it, which means that you cannot report it or legislate against it. As a result, perpetrators of sexual violence and harassment continue to exercise their power and privileges of their professional positions.

In Spain, much more pressure from feminist movements is crucial in order to expand terminology and definitions for sexual violence.  In today’s culture there is a limited vocabulary for talking about sexual violence; therefore, it is not represented accurately or honestly.

The Spanish judge in the Pamplona rape case discredited and mitigated the offense because he deemed it low on a range of horrors.  He discredited the victim by dissecting her composure and her silence.

Men have always had permission to do what feels good, and some abusers have even been seen as cultural icons, take Bill Cosby in recent history.  Before the #MeToo phenomenon, and women standing up saying they were assaulted, raped pressured or harassed into having sex, men were given the sexual freedom to treat women as objects.

But sexual violence is not about sex, it is about power.  It is about one person making another feel less significant and humiliated.  What has happened in Spain is a case of a judge who wants business to continue as usual.  By calling the attack sexual abuse and not rape, the judge has not held the attackers responsible for their violent crime, and has sent a message of impunity to men in Spain.

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