Calls to 016

2022

Country/area: Spain

Organisation: Maldita.es

Organisation size: Small

Publication date: 9/4/2021

Credit: Adela Vived, Sergio Sangiao, Yuly Jara, Nacho Calle and José Molina

Biography: The project has been created by Maldito Dato, the section specialised in data journalism, investigation and FOIA of Maldita.es, a media outlet focused on fact-checking.

Part of Maldito Dato team during 2021 (Sergio Sangiao, Adela Vived, Yuly Jara and José Molina) and the deputy director of Maldita.es, Ignacio Calle, participated in the reports about calls to the 016.

Project description:

During 2021, Maldita.es investigated calls to the 016 number, the hotline for victims of gender-based violence in Spain.

Thanks to the analysis of open data we were able to see that after the premiere of a documentary on television there had been the largest month-on-month increase in history.

After that, via FOIA, we obtained more detailed data and thanks to this we were able to go further and count, among other things, how November 25 is the day that this number is historically called the most.

Impact reached:

The impact of the reports on the effect of Rocío Carrasco’s documentary was very great. The documentary program itself and its television network (Telecinco, one of the most watched in Spain) echoed the data investigation carried out by Maldita.es.

In addition, many other media echoed and we were really able to show this effect for the first time with data that was not known. The same about the calls on 25-N: until what we get the data and analyze and investigate it was unknown that it is the day that more Spanish women seek help for being victims of gender violence.

Techniques/technologies used:

FOIA, Open Data, Excel, Analysis, Data Visualization…

What was the hardest part of this project?

Analyze the historical data day by day of calls to 016 from its creation in 2007 to the present. First it was very difficult to obtain them via FOIA because the Ministry of Equality did not want to deliver them and then it was difficult to analyze them in detail and in context to get really clear and true patterns without falling into possible interpretations that are not entirely clear.

What can others learn from this project?

That you have to go look for more detailed and richer data than those that have already been published.

That you have to interview the databases not just looking at what interests you to find more histories. Rocío Carrasco’s documentary was purely newsworthy in Spain and we tried to analyze its effect, but when analyzing all the history we also realized the pattern that historically existed on 25-N.