Santander (EFE) Being a “visible” space to attract more women and minors who suffer sexual assaults.
The vice president and counselor for Equality, Pablo Zuloaga, has presented this new center, located in a three-story chalet in the center of Santander, together with the general director of Women, Consuelo Gutiérrez, who has advanced that last year they were treated in the region to almost a thousand women and minors for gender violence.
Gutiérrez explained that, of those cases, 60 files were for sexual assault, with a lower percentage of complaints, which stands at 8 percent of cases, while it rises to 30 percent in situations of gender violence in the realm of the couple.
“Warm and welcoming” space for “recovery”
With these data, he pointed out that the objective of this center, which is going to be called “Marzas”, a typical song from Cantabria to make young women fall in love at the beginning of spring, is to become a “tractor” and to be known for women, so that the number of reports of sexual assaults increases.
And he has pointed out that, based on the data handled by Asturias, a similar autonomous community and which already has an equal center, it is estimated that “at least care for women victims will be doubled” of these attacks. “We are going to try to make it a particularly warm, welcoming, dignified space and one that is endowed with the idea of recovery”, she remarked.
The general director has detailed that the service that this center will provide, in a building acquired by the Government of Cantabria for more than 800,000 euros from European recovery funds, is part of “crisis and emergency” situations.
To this end, it has facilities equipped with different services, including a kitchen to offer a temporary place of shelter for victims for a few hours until they are transferred to homes set up for long-term stays and shelters.
It will be attended all day, with two multidisciplinary teams in the morning and afternoon, one of them coming from the Santander victim care center, which is leaving its current location, while the night and weekend staff will be trained to telephone attention. “It is a reception center for victims,” he added, in which care and support services will be provided.
Cantabria, at the forefront in attention to victims
Zuloaga has highlighted that the center will be located in a “historic” building in Santander, on Las Marzas street, which has extensive rehabilitation work and has detailed that it will open its doors once the purchase file for the property, chosen from three options, and minor adaptation works are carried out inside.
The vice president has indicated that the objective is that “at the end of April” this center can begin to provide the first services under a name that, beyond coinciding with the name of the street where it is located, “has a lot to do with it”, As he added, with March 8, the day against gender violence, and with “the change of seasons and the transition from winter to spring” that he has linked to a way out of that situation for the victims.
In this way, Pablo Zuloaga has claimed that Cantabria will be the first community to have a service that is required by the law of comprehensive guarantee of sexual freedom, known as the law of “only if it is yes”, to the autonomous governments, beyond of those that had already implemented it before the entry into force of this regulation, such as Madrid and Asturias.
“After the new development of the law, Cantabria will be the first autonomous community to have a 24-hour care center, a ‘crisis’ center as it is also known, against gender violence”, concluded the vice president and head of Equality of the Government of Cantabria.
