• Women’s and citizens’ groups protest increase in sexual assault during festival
• Police arrest 12 male suspects, including five who filmed rape on mobile phone
Four rapes, an attempted rape and three additional sexual assaults during Pamplona’s 2016 San Fermin celebration brought women’s and citizens groups onto the streets to protest the continued aggression against women associated with the city’s annual ‘Running of the Bulls’ festival.
Pamplona law enforcement officials say they have detained 12 individuals on charges of rape and sexual assault, including an off-duty, rookie Civil Guard police officer and four other men from Sevilla, who allegedly used a mobile phone to film their gang-rape of a 19-year-old woman.
Animal-rights activists in Spain have long claimed there is a link between Spain’s culture of machismo, the abuse of women and children and cruelty toward animals displayed in the country’s ‘national sport’ of bullfighting. The continued aggression against women at the annual festival in Pamplona has been on the rise in recent years, with four complaints for sexual aggression filed in 2015.
According to the Spanish interior ministry, in 2015 there were 1,127 rape complaints filed by women in Spain and on average a women is raped somewhere in Spain once every eight hours every day of the year.
► Read More in Spanish at El Diario Vasco and El País …
► Read More in English at El País and The Mirror …
