Protection orders for victims of gender violence decreased by 6.5% in 2024, a contraction that has been observed in all autonomous communities and that worries experts because only one in six reports of abuse resulted in this protection.
The year 2024 ended with 199,094 reports of gender violence and with the judicial granting of 33,247 protection orders, which represents 16.69% of those reports.
In 2023, that rate was 17.84%, according to data from the Observatory against Domestic and Gender Violence of the General Council of the Judiciary.
Last year, 2,314 fewer orders were granted than in 2023, 33,247.
49,268 were requested (in one in four reports), of which 67.48% were adopted (compared to 69.9% in 2024). In the specific case of the Canary Islands, that percentage reached 76.7%.
There were also fewer orders requested (they are granted by a judge, but the victim's defense or the prosecutor's office must request them beforehand), 3% below those requested in 2023.
Fewer were requested (3%) and even fewer were granted (6.5%), an alarm signal, according to lawyers consulted by EFE.
Reporting and not obtaining protection
Lawyer Altamira Gonzalo expresses her concern about these statistics because, she explains, "the protection order is the guarantee of non-repetition of criminal activity, it is the guarantee for the abused woman who has filed the report that she will not be abused again because the State is going to protect her."
Feminist jurists have been warning of "the stinginess in granting protection orders," which can have deadly results: "Every year the percentage of murdered women who had reported is increasing a little, this is the great failure," says Gonzalo.
Also lawyer and director of the Women's Foundation, Marisa Soleto, confirms "a trend that fewer and fewer women are protected by the protection order and also that the number of requests is decreasing."
"If the denials of protection orders increase, what happens is that the entire context of legal operators adjusts to the fact that if they are not going to give it to me, I do not request it. A call must be made reminding that the protection order is a right of the victims and that, of course, if they are not requested, they are not granted," Soleto emphasizes.
"The moment of the report is identified as a moment of risk and that the protection order is not established means that she goes home without any protection and may be in a situation of risk without having received an adequate judicial response," she adds.
The protection order is decided in a judicial resolution "that enshrines the statute of comprehensive protection of victims" through the adoption of criminal and civil precautionary measures when there are "well-founded indications of the commission of crimes" and an objective risk situation for the victim.
These measures are varied, from the deprivation of liberty of the aggressor to the prohibition of communication with the victim, the restraining order, the suspension of the visitation regime or the withdrawal of parental authority of the minors, the use of the home...
The low percentage of requests, says Gonzalo, counteracts the idea that women report to obtain benefits (custody of children, attribution of the home...). "The vast majority do not ask for it" and "the Prosecutor's Office should have a more active role and also the legal profession, and the judges should be more generous," she points out.
Gonzalo points out that denialism not only influences women to ask for fewer protection orders, but also that many reports are taken less seriously: "Denialism is doing a work of dissuasion among women and of putting doubts among those who have to help them get out of violence."
Territorial inequity
In absolute terms, the protection orders adopted are lower in all autonomous communities. If we look at the percentage of orders granted with respect to those requested, it has decreased in all territories except in Catalonia, which has gone from 47.8% in 2028 to 49.6% in 2024. Madrid does not reach 50% either, with 46.26%.
There is a great territorial inequality in the granting of orders. They are granted more in Murcia (83.6%), Balearic Islands (80.28%), Aragon (79.9%), Comunitat Valenciana (78.3%) and Navarra (78%).
The map is completed as follows: Basque Country (58.8%), Cantabria (62.9%), Galicia (64.1%), Castilla-La Mancha (70.3%), Extremadura (71.9%), Castilla y León (73.49%), Asturias (74%), La Rioja (75.8%), Andalusia (76.2%) and Canary Islands (76.7%).
Soleto affirms that these differences between judicial parties, denounced for years by feminist organizations, are worrying and regrets that the CGPJ has not publicly explained why it happens.
In this sense, Gonzalo recalls that the Grevio (the group of European experts that analyzes compliance with the Istanbul Convention) has called attention to this inequity and has demanded that the Spanish state find out what is happening.
