The Department for Equality will update the coverage map it uses to monitor anti-abuse bracelets, telematics monitoring devices to know the exact location of sexist attackers with seizure orders. This initiative aims to improve coverage in all rural areas. The Temporal Union of Companies (UTE), responsible for the Cometa system that monitors these bracelets, will be responsible for updating the coverage map of the devices. In addition, you will have to update it periodically with all national operators in the sector.
The Observatory against Gender Violence of the Consejo General del Poder Judicial (CGPJ) complained this same week about these improvements because errors in the geolocation of pulseras are one of the “most recurring incidents”, according to the president of the Observatory, Esther Rojo, in an interview with Europa Press. A spokesperson for Equality ensures that the initiative came from the ministry.
The new map will include additional information that will be transferred to the police to facilitate “full institutional collaboration” against gender-based violence, according to the Equality note. The results of the reports will also be reported to the Observatorio de Violencia de Género of the CGPJ so that, together with the Delegación del Gobierno contra la Violencia de Género ―on which the Cometa system depends―, they can be disseminated “to all judicial authorities”.
The Cometa system was created to monitor gender-based attackers against those with arrest warrants. This is done using bracelets that geolocate both parties and alert authorities in case the abused person approaches the victim. However, the usefulness of these devices has fallen into disrepair since faults were discovered in September last year, which meant that for a few months they were unable to know the attackers’ movements until March 20, 2024.
The incidents occurred because the ministry changed the company that manages it and renewed the devices and some service functions, leading to vulnerabilities. One of them was precisely that rural areas were less protected because, despite the change of provider, many of them fell without coverage, causing alerts to be slow to reach the victims and the location of the attackers was imprecise. The new card announced by the ministry aims to temporarily solve this part of the problem because, until May 2026, the contract with the current supplier remains in force.
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