The questions were addressed to the mayor of Donostia-San Sebastián, but he did not appear before the People’s Services Committee of the City Council, and Duñike Arrizabalaga of the PNV took the floor in his place.

The commission was due to start at 12:00 noon, and at the same time a silent rally was held in front of the City Hall, convened by the Support Platform for Victims of Kote Cabezudo. There was Mario Díez, lawyer for sixteen victims of Kote Cabezudo – who has just taken over the defense of four more women – along with members of the victim support platform.

The scale of the Cabezudo case is increasing day by day. In January 2013, a woman accused the San Sebastián photographer for the first time, and since then, several women have taken Cabezudo to court. The number of women reporting to the photographer is 21 days.

Naiara Sampedro, from EH Reunidos, welcomed the members of the Victim Support Platform and regretted that Eneko Goia did not appear because she believed that “the mayor has this issue as a priority”. Sampedro asked whether the Municipal Government would provide protection to the victims and what resources would be made available for that purpose. On the other hand, he accuses the Municipal Government of not having “contacted the association of victims” of Kote Cabezudo.

Duñike Arrizabalaga of the PNV responds that they intend to contact the victims and reminds the councilor of EH Reunidos that at the time of the first complaint against Kote Cabezudo in 2013, Sampedro was the councilor for equality of the Municipal Government.

“The government is not taking the initiative, it has come late to this case. We think it is very serious not to contact the women who have denounced it,” says Amaia Martín de Gandia. In addition to the photographer, Martin adds other issues to the table, such as the case of the tattooist from San Sebastian who was imprisoned in February for sexual abuse.

The political parties in the Commission have proposed the creation of a Conference of Spokespersons to answer the question.

Many words, few solutions

“It has been more about complaining to each other than something constructive,” said Mario Díez, the lawyer for the sixteen victims in the case. He has been the lawyer for four more women since Friday – sixteen in total – and has announced that he will introduce four more. Díez defends victims of abuses that extend from 1988 to 2013.

What worries the lawyer the most is that the PNV has asked to appear at the trials as a political party, which he hopes will lead to political interference: “The appearance of a political party at trial would cause the identity of the complainants to be known and all the material of the trial process to be known, and I think it is out of place. We are talking about child pornography, sexual abuse... which causes uncertainty for the victims. They demand to appear in court in the name of the law, and today the mayor did not appear to the committee.”

Regarding the political interference, Díez said that they have already filed a complaint with the Spanish Attorney General’s Office because they suspect that the process has not been carried out “with the necessary guarantees”, because it is possible that Kote Cabezudo has relations with “the people who have supported him”. As an example, he refers to the case against Judge Ana Isabel Pérez Asenjo, who was the judge in this case. The Supreme Court of the Basque Country has accepted the complaint and has provisionally excluded it from the proceedings. Pérez Asenjo is accused of not doing anything to remove images of sexual assaults on women from the Internet, among other things. “What the victims want is for this trial to end as soon as possible and with all the guarantees. Politicians are putting fewer and fewer obstacles, better for the victims,” says Díez.

According to the lawyers, now the victims dare to denounce Kote Cabezudo because “the defendant is temporarily in prison.” She highlights the fear of denouncing women when they have been on the street, as the victims feared that “the photographer could have material that could be used against them.”

The Apparition of the Chan Mago

The Magician Santi Antero Txan takes the word by surprise during the rally and says that he lives “this issue very closely”. “When I was a kid I used to go fishing and twice I was touched by a guy,” he explains. He claims that the assailant was the brother of former mayor Jesús Mari Alkain.