Michael
By Michael Coy
EARLIER this month in the village of Gerena (15 miles north of Sevilla), two teenage boys got into a fight and one of them ended up stabbed.
Then last week (January 14) in Valladolid, a man was knifed to death by his girlfriend’s ‘ex’. A lot of people in Spain are asking, “What drives a man to harm or kill another man, over a woman?” If you murder your girlfriend’s former lover, it’s hardly likely to improve your life (or, dare we say, your chances of keeping the girl).
We can all acknowledge that sometimes a man can simply ‘lose it’: there are occasions (thankfully rare) when anyone can feel so angry that normal constraints are swept away.
But to choose violence because you want to manipulate a woman’s behaviour is a different thing. Spanish psychologists call it ‘Othello Syndrome’.
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We all know of cases where a divorced man tries to influence his children against his ex. Everyone in Andalucía remembers the dreadful ‘Bretón Case’ of 2011, where a Córdoba man murdered his children because his former wife wouldn’t take him back. But for anyone to kill his own children must involve mental illness, mustn’t it?
Arguably, if two men are prepared to fight over a woman, they see her not as a human being, but as a ‘trophy’. And this is what Othello Syndrome is all about. It is when men (it’s always men) see their sentimental partner as a possession, something to be ‘earned’ in combat.
The Queen Sofía Centre in Madrid regularly publishes the Barómetro Juventud y Género (The Youth and Gender Barometer), a survey of attitudes towards family and sexism in Spain, undertaken by Spanish psychologists.
In the latest edition, 44% of young men said that all lads have a responsibility to protect their girlfriends. But what is protection? When does protection shade into possession, or domination? Some 27% of those interviewed regarded jealousy as ‘normal’ in a relationship. That is worrying. When pressed on this, they said that jealousy is ‘proof of love’. But is it?
The young people who took part in the survey were asked if love is more intense when it’s accompanied by fear and insecurity. Some 37% of the men said yes, whereas only 17% of the women agreed. And surely that’s the point. In our culture, there is a difference between men and women in the way we perceive love, and what is permissible in a lover.
In August 2018, Javier Ardines was found dead in the street outside his home. He had been beaten to death. Javier was a town councillor in Llanes, the picturesque little seaport in Asturias. A man jealous of Javier’s love affair suborned three others into helping him ambush his ‘rival’.
An ambulance driver in Madrid stabbed a male nurse in March 2021 because he suspected the man of having an affair with his wife. Other knife attacks are, if not common, far from unheard of – like the one in Tudela de Duero last year.
We might pause to comment on the frequency with which the knife (a Freudian symbol if there ever was one) is the weapon selected by the jealous man. Is it cultural? Don José, in the opera Carmen, chooses a knife to end his wretched affair. But we easily forget that Carmen, though set in Sevilla, is a French work, not a Spanish one.
In the great Shakespeare play, the noble and decent Othello allows himself to be persuaded that Desdemona (as loyal as they come) is having an affair with Cassio. So distraught does he finally end up that he murders his wife. Of course, the story which Iago planted in Othello’s brain was utter fiction all along.
Jealousy is clearly linked to insecurity, and might well have something to do with perceiving your partner as a ‘trophy’, which you are unwilling to give away to anyone else. As all these cases testify, Othello Syndrome is a real thing. But one thing which it’s not, is love.
