It's Sunday, April 5th. This week, in the Spanish state, six men have murdered their relationship partners or former relationship partners, according to the Ministry of the Interior. The last death victim has been a 29-year-old neighbor of Vitoria-Gasteiz, who has been taken to Donostia Hospital. Her three babies have been orphaned. The website Feminicidio.net this year has counted twenty Machian murders in three months. According to the official data, there are twelve, since for the Spanish state to identify them as gender violence there must be a relationship between the victim and the murderer.

On social media, the feminists have made us aware of the state of alert, while the leaders of the Spanish Government and the Basque Government have shown no concern. I've typed in Google the words "gender-based violence Gasteiz lehendakari." A 2013 news item has been released as the first result: Iñigo Urkullu said in an act by Emakunde that the eradication of gender violence is a "transcendental" goal for him. “Murder Gasteiz Urkullu” I wrote it on Google. Among the preliminary results of the survey is the following news from El Mundo: “Lehendakari has assured that the Ertzaintza is absolutely ready to deal with terrorist jihadism.” Date: 1 April 2015. The ghost of jihadism receives more political and media attention than the reality of Sexist violence. Apart from concrete acts in favour of equality, the murders of women do not deserve a political statement.

This very week, the Civil Guard has spread via Twitter a poster comparing the abuse of women with the abuse of men. My non-feminist friends have considered it appropriate to denounce all violence to the same extent. I have had to explain once again that the aim of such images is to deny the uniqueness and structural character of violence against women.

Many still use the concept of “domestic violence”. The Law against Gender Violence of the Spanish State reinforces this tendency by limiting its application to the sphere of the couple. Male violence, on the other hand, has multiple faces. Sexual harassment, for example, can be lived on the street, in the workplace, in the bar, in the gaztetxe or in the bus. The Machian aggressors are not crazy beings, but children of patriarchy, educated in a violent system for women and normalizing sexist aggressions. That's what we mean when we try to explain that gender violence is structural.

But the use of the concept of “male violence” to talk about killings also raises a problem: that is to name the top of the iceberg. For this reason, it seems urgent to me to bring to our country the concept of “feminicide”, which is widespread in Latin America. In other words, to underline that women are systematically murdered both in the partner and in other areas (remember Nagore Laffage, for example). To make it clear that it is the bloodiest indicator of male violence that aims to keep women in control. And, above all, to denounce the complicity of states. In the words of the Cear-Euskadi dictionary, the concept of feminicide means “the unwillingness of states to face violence and its role in perpetuating violence through the patriarchal structures it sustains”. Obviously, the Government is not able to guarantee the life and human rights of half the population. Therefore, femicide is not a set of isolated facts, but a state crime against women.