{"id":83141,"date":"2025-09-24T17:17:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T17:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/83141\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T17:17:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T17:17:07","slug":"spanish-political-storm-over-bracelet-system-to-protect-women-from-violence-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/83141\/","title":{"rendered":"Spanish political storm over bracelet system to protect women from violence \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Spanish<\/a> government is under pressure after failings were detected in an electronic bracelet system designed to protect potential victims of gender violence.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

A report by the attorney general\u2019s office has come to light highlighting \u201canomalies\u201d 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 Telef\u00f3nica to Vodafone.<\/p>\n

The attorney general\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring that [data] transfer there were some technical problems because, unfortunately, technology fails,\u201d said equality minister Ana Redondo, of the Socialist Party, who said that the bracelets themselves worked.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s true that we knew about certain cases and we were always on top of them to resolve them immediately,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The opposition is calling for Ms Redondo\u2019s resignation. Despite the government\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Miguel Tello, spokesman for the conservative People\u2019s Party (PP), echoed false rumours that the bracelets had been acquired through a Chinese online vendor, describing them as those bought on \u201cAliExpress, which break more often than a fairground shotgun\u201d.<\/p>\n

The socialists\u2019 junior coalition partner, Sumar, has called for an investigation. Deputy prime minister Yolanda D\u00edaz said that, as well as finding out exactly what had happened, \u201cif there were faults and there were women who were affected by these faults, logically, there should be compensation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Tello said, \u201cthis scandal does not require a small investigation, it calls for a big resignation, that of this whole incompetent government\u201d.<\/p>\n

It has also emerged that provincial judges raised concerns about the bracelet system and, in some cases, the bracelets themselves earlier this year. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Gender equality and women\u2019s rights have been a big priority for the Socialist prime minister, Pedro S\u00e1nchez, making this a sensitive issue for his government.<\/p>\n

In 2022, when he governed in coalition with the far-left Podemos, Mr S\u00e1nchez\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The far-right Vox has also attacked the government over this case and has asked the European Commission to investigate. The party\u2019s spokesman, Jorge Buxad\u00e9 said, \u201cthe lives and safety of thousands of women have been put at risk while S\u00e1nchez claims to be \u2018the most feminist government in history\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bracelets have never stopped working and they have never left women unprotected,\u201d said party spokesman Pablo Fern\u00e1ndez. \u201cWhat is being said [by the political right] is absolute misinformation and that needs to be made clear.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Spanish government is under pressure after failings were detected in an electronic bracelet system designed to protect…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,383,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-83141","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-latest-news","14":"tag-latestnews","15":"tag-main-news","16":"tag-mainnews","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-spain","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-topstories","21":"tag-world","22":"tag-world-news","23":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}