Spain is struggling to cope with a rising tide of violence, with around 100 women killed in conjugal violence over the past year while the overall murder rate in Madrid has doubled.
Two women were killed over the weekend and police on Monday put this year's tally of victims of conjugal violence at 45 -- while the opposition Socialist Party (PSOE) came up with a figure of 50.
The spate of killings has sparked a political row with the conservative government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar saying the PSOE are holding up planned legislation designed to clamp down on the criminals.
Last year Spanish women registered 30,000 complaints of physical violence with the police and in January the government approved plans to make provisions for longer sentences for those responsible -- plans which feminist groups say do not go far enough.
The judicial reforms have since become bogged down in party point-scoring. An association of female lawyers has blasted the reforms, now due to take effect from September, as mere government window-dressing.
PSOE equal rights spokeswoman Micaela Navarro blasted the government's "passivity" in the face of the upsurge in violence but Justice Minister Jose Maria Michavila asserted PSOE amendments were holding up the embryonic legislation.
Navarro and PSOE colleague Diego Lopez Garrido both rejected the allegation, with Navarro saying there had been "plenty of time" to come up with suitable legislation and Garrido slamming Michavila's comments as "frivolous and absurd."
Michavila retorted that political posturing would only serve to hamper the government's efforts to find a solution.
"I want to work on this issue in a non-party political manner in order to protect women and ensure the aggressors are dealt with ever more severely, more quickly and more efficiently," Michavila insisted.
The flames of the argument were fanned by the killing of two women on Sunday. Police arrested a policeman after discovering his wife's dismembered body, while in the northern coastal city of Santander a 33-year-old man was in police custody on suspicion of strangling his 33-year-old partner. Spanish media reports said the man had turned himself in after cutting his wrists. The woman had been strangled with a length of nylon fabric.
Fundacion Mujeres, a women's rights association, maintains 315 women have been killed in incidents of domestic violence since 1999. A spokeswoman for the non-governmental organization on Monday decried the latest killings and urged the government to act.
The rising tide of violence comes against a backdrop of escalating crime in the Spanish capital, with 70 murders reported so far this year, compared with 57 in the whole of last year.
The trend in Spain as a whole has been steadily rising with 1,323 murders nationwide in 2000 or 3.3 murders per 100,000 population, almost double an EU average of 1.7 per 100,000 for the same timeframe, according to International Comparisons of Criminal Justice Statistics. The 1993 figure for Spain was just 0.95 homicides per 100,000 population.
The opposition Socialists last Friday warned Madrid urgently needed up to 5,000 more police.
Interior Minister Angel Acebes on Monday responded to his law and order critics by announcing the construction of four new prisons in a 252 million euro (US$290 million) program to boost capacity by 4,032 places, adding to other 13 prisons housing 10,027 inmates and built in the seven years since Aznar came to power. Spain's prison population is currently estimated at 54,000 -- 91.9 percent of those incarcerated being men.
In a worldwide context, the US, which locks up 702 prisoners per 100,000 population and Russia (665) lead the way, according to June statistics from the International Centre for Prison Studies.
Britain (England and Wales) led the way in western Europe at 138, followed by Portugal at 135, with Spain rapidly closing the gap at 125.
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