The mayor of Palma, Jaime Martínez, insisted on Friday that Palma is “the city most committed to the defence of victims of gender violence“.
This followed the outcry on Thursday when it was revealed at the meeting of the budget commission for citizen security that 53,000 euros had been eliminated from local police spending on care for victims of gender violence. It was announced at the meeting that Palma Police would no longer be handling reports of gender violence.
Opposition parties demanded the immediate dismissals of the citizen security councillor, Miquel Busquets, and the security coordinator, Jaume Pla, who explained that the cut was being made because the National Police have the relevant responsibilities, not Palma Police.
The spokesperson for PSOE, Francisco Ducrós, wanted to know whether the mayor had been aware of the decision. Whether he had been or not, he had to rectify the decision. “It is an issue that has to do with very serious crimes. Palma is the city with the highest rate of cases of gender violence in the whole country.”
Another PSOE councillor, Angélica Pastor, who is a former citizen security councillor, said that it was not true, as had been maintained, that Palma was the only Spanish city where the local police collected and processed complaints from victims of gender violence: “The violence agreement is the same for the whole of Spain, and all police forces take complaints.”
Police sources themselves were reported to have been angered by the Thursday announcement, a view having been that Jaume Pla had been made a scapegoat and that the Partido Popular administration had reacted to pressure from Vox.
On Friday, Martínez stated that “the monitoring of victims of gender violence will continue in the same way as it has been carried out in Palma”.
