Calls to Spain’s 016 helpline rose by 120.8% in the hours following the country’s World Cup victory
According to official data, enquiries through every institutional support channel for gender-based violence increased on the Monday after the match.
The World Cup final was played at nine o’clock last Sunday evening. Spain defeated Argentina. While hundreds of thousands of people celebrated the victory in bars, streets and homes, calls began to rise to Spain’s helpline for gender-based violence, 016. Data obtained by this newspaper show that the sharpest increase occurred between 11 p.m. on Sunday and 7 a.m. on Monday, when calls rose by 120.8% compared with the same period the previous week.
During the day on Sunday, the helpline received fewer calls than on the previous Sundays that month. However, the trend began to change after the match ended and continued throughout Monday, peaking in the early hours of the morning. Overall, calls for the entire day were up 21.9% compared with the previous Monday.
The increases were even greater across two other support channels provided by the Ministry of Equality for victims, their families and those around them. The largest rise was in emails sent to [email protected], which, according to information supplied by the Ministry, increased by 1,000% compared with the previous Monday. Enquiries through the online chat service rose by 60%, while WhatsApp enquiries to 600 000 016 recorded the smallest increase, at 8.75%. Absolute figures were not provided.
The rise across all the services offered through 016 reflects the connection between gender-based violence and World Cup celebrations that experts have highlighted in recent days. The issue entered public debate in Spain on Tuesday, after two gender-based killings had taken place in less than 24 hours: one in Antequera, Málaga, and another in Alameda de la Sagra, Toledo. A further killing in Benahavís, also in Málaga, is still being investigated as a possible femicide outside the context of a current or former intimate relationship. A fourth death in Almoradí, Alicante, was initially suspected to be related to gender-based violence but was subsequently ruled out.
What prompted this connection to be made (and it is not a new one).
Although the issue has yet to be studied in Spain, researchers in other countries, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom, have been examining it for years, with consistently similar findings. In May this year, UN Women and UNICEF launched a campaign entitled Violence against women is not part of the game. They estimated that emergency helplines could receive up to 30% more calls during matches such as those about to be played in the World Cup.
Campaigns of this kind have been running in the United Kingdom for years. In 2014, Tender, an English organisation working to prevent gender-based violence, produced an advertisement showing a frightened woman waiting for the result of England’s match in that year’s World Cup in Brazil. The advertisement ended with the words: “No one wants England to win more than women. Domestic violence increased by 38% when England were knocked out of the World Cup.”
That campaign was based on a Lancaster University study analysing Lancashire Police data from three tournaments held in 2002, 2006 and 2010. “After controlling for the day of the week, incidents of domestic violence in Lancashire increased by 38% when the England team played and lost, and by 26% when it won or drew, compared with days on which England did not play. A carry-over effect was also observed, with domestic violence incidents rising by 11% on the day after an England match.”
In 2022, a systematic review was published of research conducted up to 2020 into the relationship between major sporting events and gender-based violence. The researchers noted that “the relationship between sporting culture and violence against women is widely recognised” and that “sport is perceived as a gendered activity that exemplifies hegemonic masculinity and its associated violence.”
In their conclusions, they highlighted both the “scarcity of studies” conducted outside the United Kingdom and the United States and the “heterogeneity” of the 1,445 studies they had examined. They argued that further research was needed because the findings suggested that the increase in gender-based violence was not associated solely with the staging of a major sporting event. Factors specific to individual sports or countries may also contribute to the rise. Other possible influences included “significant rivalry between teams” and “the importance, or emotional significance, of the game.”
A few days ago, the forensic doctor Miguel Lorente, a former Spanish Government Delegate for Gender-Based Violence, added another extensively researched factor to the emotional importance that sporting events may hold for many men: alcohol. Alcohol is closely associated with these celebrations and, he explained, can act as a “social stressor” that “lowers inhibitions and can make violence more explosive.”
Nevertheless, he concluded that the way sporting events are celebrated, alcohol and other intoxicating substances are merely factors that may interact with violence. “The only person responsible for a gender-based murder is the man who commits it, and the sole underlying cause is sexism.”
So far this year, 31 women have been murdered by their current or former partners. Since official records began in 2003, the total stands at 1,372 women. This year, 20 children have been orphaned as a result of this violence, bringing the total to 530 since official records began in 2013.
The 016 helpline supports victims of gender-based violence, their families and those around them 24 hours a day, every day of the year, in 53 languages. The number does not appear on telephone bills, although the call must still be deleted from the device’s call history.
Support is also available by email at [email protected] and through WhatsApp on 600 000 016. Children and young people can contact the ANAR Foundation on 900 20 20 10. In an emergency, call 112, the National Police on 091 or the Guardia Civil on 062. Anyone unable to make a call can use the ALERTCOPS application to send a geolocated emergency alert to the police.
Source: El País: https://elpais.com/sociedad/2026-07-23/las-llamadas-al-016-crecieron-un-1208-en-las-horas-posteriores-a-que-espana-ganara-el-mundial.html
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