The data are from the Observatory of Murdered Women (OMA), the Alternative and Response Women Union (UMAR), and are presented in the preliminary report that is presented in Lisbon, which brings the reality of women murdered in Portugal since 1 January until 12 November.

During this period, and taking as its source the news published by the national press, the OMA counted 28 women murdered in the context of intimate or family relations, in addition to two others killed in different contexts, and 27 attempted murders.

All told, it means that on average there were three women murdered every month and an average of five women victims of extreme violence.

“Regarding the relationship between victims and homicides, as in previous years, we continue to find that 53 percent of murdered women had a close relationship with the murderer while 21 percent had already tried to break this relationship,” it reads on the report.

He adds that "intimate relationships - present and former - represent 74 percent of the total reported femicides."

On the other hand, when crossing the incidence of femicide with the presence of domestic violence in the present or past intimacy and family relationships, it was possible to verify that the majority (71 percent) of the murdered women were victims of violence in this relationship.

“In this sense, in 71 percent of situations it is very likely that someone close to the victim was aware of such violence” says the OMA, who argues that it is urgent to implement primary prevention programmes.

This percentage corresponds to 20 cases where it was found that there was a context of domestic violence, within which there were 12 where there was a complaint, i.e., criminal proceeding prior to the practice of homicide.

The OMA noted the existence of 45 children of the dead women, of which 26 were children of the victim from an earlier relationship and 19 were the common children of the victim and the murderer. In total, 16 were minors, leading UMAR to call for special attention to children who are victims of gender crimes and in particular to children who become orphans.

The characterization of the victim showed that the age group with the most femicides was women aged 36 to 50 (43 percent), immediately followed by the age group over 65 (21 percent), with half of the victims being inserted in the job market.

This leads UMAR to defend the need to increase the protection of these women and the creation of “specific structures with methods, instruments and specialized responses tailored to the specificities of older women, especially in areas further away from large urban centres”.

The murderer, statistically, is between 36 and 50 years old (32 percent) and between 51 and 64 years old (25 percent), and most (57 percent) were employed.

The month of January stood out as the one with the highest number of occurrences (seven), followed by February, August and October, with three deaths each, and no homicide was recorded in November.

"Residence remains the space where most femicides were committed (71 percent), followed by offenses on the public highway (18 percent)," the report said, adding that most crimes happened either at night or in the morning.

Most of the women (13) were killed using a firearm, but there were also eight cases of stabbings, three beatings, three strangled and one asphyxiated women.

In geographical distribution, Lisbon comes ahead with seven cases of murdered women, followed by Braga and Setúbal, both with four cases each.