The Spanish government is under pressure after failings were detected in an electronic bracelet system designed to protect potential victims of gender violence.
The bracelets are equipped with a GPS system, alerting the authorities when a potential aggressor, who is also fitted with one, gets too close to the victim and breaks the terms of his restraining order. About 4,500 bracelets are in use.
A report by the attorney general’s office has come to light highlighting “anomalies” in the bracelet system, causing incidents that prevented it from functioning fully last year. The problem appears to have originated in the transfer, between late 2023 and early 2024, of the contract to manage the technology used in the bracelets from telecoms company Telefónica to Vodafone.
The attorney general’s office found that during that time a data vacuum meant that the documentation of a number of cases where restraining orders had been violated had been lost, leading to cases being shelved or aggressors absolved by gender violence courts.
“During that [data] transfer there were some technical problems because, unfortunately, technology fails,” said equality minister Ana Redondo, of the Socialist Party, who said that the bracelets themselves worked.
“It’s true that we knew about certain cases and we were always on top of them to resolve them immediately,” she said.
The opposition is calling for Ms Redondo’s resignation. Despite the government’s assurances, it has also cast doubt on the reliability of the bracelets, more than 21,000 of which have been issued since they were first introduced in 2009.
Miguel Tello, spokesman for the conservative People’s Party (PP), echoed false rumours that the bracelets had been acquired through a Chinese online vendor, describing them as those bought on “AliExpress, which break more often than a fairground shotgun”.
The socialists’ junior coalition partner, Sumar, has called for an investigation. Deputy prime minister Yolanda Díaz said that, as well as finding out exactly what had happened, “if there were faults and there were women who were affected by these faults, logically, there should be compensation.”
Mr Tello said, “this scandal does not require a small investigation, it calls for a big resignation, that of this whole incompetent government”.
It has also emerged that provincial judges raised concerns about the bracelet system and, in some cases, the bracelets themselves earlier this year.
El Confidencial news site quoted one judge who said that there were problems with the GPS signal and the battery and that some men facing restraining orders had managed to remove the bracelet.
Gender equality and women’s rights have been a big priority for the Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, making this a sensitive issue for his government.
In 2022, when he governed in coalition with the far-left Podemos, Mr Sánchez’s administration faced a backlash when a law it had pushed through parliament seeking to ensure consent in sexual relations inadvertently led to the early release of dozens of sex offenders because of a legal loophole. The opposition has sought to present the bracelet issue as a similar case.
The far-right Vox has also attacked the government over this case and has asked the European Commission to investigate. The party’s spokesman, Jorge Buxadé said, “the lives and safety of thousands of women have been put at risk while Sánchez claims to be ‘the most feminist government in history’”.
Podemos, which was at the centre of the sexual consent law controversy and controlled the equality ministry until late 2023, has robustly defended the bracelet system.
“The bracelets have never stopped working and they have never left women unprotected,” said party spokesman Pablo Fernández. “What is being said [by the political right] is absolute misinformation and that needs to be made clear.”