Spanish Interior Ministry statistics have revealed that the country saw a large increase in crime last year, with the number of rapes rising by nearly 34 per cent as other sex assaults rose by over 50 per cent.
Overall, crime grew by 18.8 per cent across Spain but some crimes saw very large increases, such as sexual assaults involving penetration which increased by 53.2 per cent compared to 2022, and rapes which increased by 33.9 per cent.
According to the Interior Ministry, the increase in sex crimes “must be related, in part, to the active policies of awareness and reduction of social tolerance against this type of crime, which translates into a greater willingness of victims to report and reduces the levels of underreporting existing in these criminal types,” the newspaper El Mundo reports.
Overall crime figures per capita show that Spain sees around 48.8 criminal acts per one thousand people, which is still much lower than countries like the United Kingdom, which has 79.5 crimes per 1,000 people and Germany where the rate stands at 60.7 or Denmark at 53.9.
The news statistics, which were released on Friday, also detail the evolution of cybercrimes for the first time, noting a 72 per cent increase in internet-based crimes since 2019, the year prior to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.
Sexual violence in Spain has also seen a surge among young people, according to juvenile prosecutor Eduardo Esteban, who stated earlier this month that the consumption of pornography may play a role in the increase.
“They go to pornography as if it were a tutorial that we handle on the Internet,” Esteban said and added, “There is really no sexual training for minors, who are resorting to alternative routes, nothing desirable, such as pornography.”
Last year also saw a debate over the issue of gender-based violence after December saw a record-breaking number of murders of women, with at least eight women killed across the country, including woman who was nine months pregnant at the time.