Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (EFE).- The Gran Canaria Feminist Network has expressed its disapproval on Monday of the decision of the Las Palmas Sports Union to include a youth player convicted of ill-treatment in the preseason of its First Division team and has appealed to the club’s sponsors so that gender violence is rejected “with deeds and not just with words.”
In a statement, this group expresses its “repudiation” of the case involving player Joel Domínguez, 18, sentenced -with his confession- to 40 days of work for the benefit of the community for sexist violence against his girlfriend, a minor .
The Feminist Network of Gran Canaria rejects that Joel Domínguez be made to play “with the first team just when he goes up to the First Division”, because “it increases his social value and his weight as a reference, ignoring that he is a convicted abuser”.
It also regrets that an “important club for the island’s population and that as such receives public money” decides that “its economic interests outweigh the unwavering condemnation of violence against women, which already drags the figure of 22 women murdered in Spain in 2023 and rises to 1,206 since 2003”.
For this reason, it makes public its support “for the victim and her family, since it is the girl who has been attacked who should receive the support that the club is offering the perpetrator, the help to overcome the situation of violence experienced and sustained by a team that promotes the aggressor without thinking about what that means for her, for the fans and for all women”.
The Feminist Network attends “with anger” to the fact that the president of the Las Palmas Sports Union, Miguel Ángel Ramírez, says that Domínguez made “a mistake” and that we must “help” him, because he considers that in this way he “minimizes the physical and mental violence”.
“From the Feminist Network of Gran Canaria, UD Las Palmas and all its public and private sponsors are requested to be aware of the fundamental role played by football, in general, and the UD Las Palmas club in particular, especially now since the First Division (…) with thousands of followers, in the collective imagination as a generator of values”, he adds.
Because, in his opinion, “among the values of respect and rejection of racism should also be included disapproval of gender violence, a social scourge that must be condemned with deeds, and not just with words.”
In a statement, the Unión Deportiva Las Palmas has responded to the controversy generated around the youth Joel Domínguez that it would be “a contradiction” for a club like his, which collaborates in various programs for the social reintegration of young people with judicial problems, “to give him the back” to a player of the entity. EFE