Carla Antonelli: "Socialism, if it is not brave, is not socialism"
The former deputy of the Assembly of Madrid Carla Antonelli, the first transsexual to occupy this position in Spain, has requested this Tuesday the withdrawal of militancy from the PSOE as a protest against themaneuver to extend deadlines” which, according to the activist, is planned by the PSOE in the processing of Trans Law in the Congress with "threat of more cuts” in the norm.
This is the full text in which Antonelli explains the reasons for his withdrawal from the party:
«Today I have requested my withdrawal from membership in the PSOE: Not in my name.
But, even so, what I will never be able to take down is my socialist nature that goes in the vein, I was, am and will be a socialist, wherever I am and whatever the field of life.
Today, I have requested that my membership be processed in the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, with immense and profound pain, from a political formation for which I have asked for the vote for 45 years, since that August 13, 1977 that I appeared in the written press of the time and they described me as a “politicized transvestite”, just two months after the first democratic elections, where since then I have militated in one way or another.
There will be people who will wonder why today and not when this delirium and hatred unleashed against the rights of trans people began two and a half years ago? And the answer is simple, because there are drops that fill glasses full and about to overflow, at the same time that, not for lack of desire, I put the -conscious self- and even, I affirm, even my own dignity, for a supreme interest and older. Which are the same ones that have always accompanied me, the fundamental rights of the group of people of which I am a part: girls, boys, children, adolescents and trans adults. Because it had to be fought for until it became law, just as I did in 2007 with the original Gender Identity norm, where a hunger strike had to be announced in protest against the indolence that they did not want to process it despite being a election pledge.
Today, for the same reasons that break my spirit, and in the face of the new maneuver of extending the deadlines for amendments until December with the threat of more cuts in the Law, which takes it to next year already immersed in the regional elections and municipal, which will be another of the possible arguments for new delays and in a sigh towards the end of the legislature.
And I want to say, that in my name and my militancy that is not going to happen, although the pain and uneasiness invade me, because there are many and many colleagues for whom I have memories of overwhelming empathy throughout all these years, of friendship, complicity, camaraderie and moments full of pride when regulations came forward that put Spain at the forefront of human rights towards the LGTBIQ+ collective, other people I don't even recognize them for what they once were and the current metamorphosis that only instills fear Also, there is a large number who are fathers, mothers, grandmothers, relatives or friends of trans people, who are now immersed in a terrible unease, as well as those who observe from silence and stupor. But, even so, what I will never be able to take down is my socialist nature that goes in the vein, I was, am and will be a socialist, wherever I am and whatever the field of life.
All these reasons are what lead me to deep disappointment and emptiness with the proceeding in the "Comprehensive Trans and LGTBIQ + Law", where the sirens' songs want to break the popular will, because a 40th Congress of the party has not been enough to reaffirm what the 39th had already endorsed, which both enshrined the commitment to comprehensive legislation towards the collective, from self-determination and depathologization, yes, that's right, without further ado. Something that we ourselves took to the Congress of Deputies in 2017, being even more progressive than the current text regarding the registration change of name and sex, which included non-binary people and did not exclude minors in any age group. ages, in addition to the guarantee in the residence cards of foreigners.
It has not been enough either to have included it in the electoral program, nor that said commitment was reflected in the investiture speech of the Coalition Government by the President of the Government himself in December 2019. In what has been going on since then until today, It has become a Dantesque nightmare, of transphobia, exclusions, internal and external humiliations that I keep for myself. As a button shows, that a lady member of the Council of State, Amelia Valcárcel de Quirós, called me “sir sixties” or that another well-known militant, Alicia Millares, directly told us “I call them uncles, because they are uncles” in a Congress from Gijon. Notes that are not, but the tips of the iceberg of the quarrelsome attitudes toward a few thousand people in this country that we have become their rag dolls, on which they spit and tear apart, unloading all their hatred and deep miseries -because sincerely - we have felt orphaned before these attitudes without any consequences where they should be taken. And everything, I will always say, because of an absurd war of quotas of space and power of people with names and surnames, to the point of denying and unsaying what we ourselves had drafted and written, or even taken to the autonomous communities like Madrid . Where we also defended and approved the most advanced Comprehensive Trans Law known to Spain, a mirror where other regions later looked at their regulations.
What was something external was made official with a transphobic pamphlet on the night of June 9, 2020, anniversary of the death of comrade Pedro Zerolo, for more fury and collective shame, which was sent to all the groups in Spain who was at that time Secretary of Equality of the Party, at the same time as First Vice President of the Government, Carmen Calvo. From then on, the nightmare acquired gigantic dimensions, not spending 24 hours in which I pronounced on the aberration of the argument, making it public on my personal accounts on social networks, and bearing in mind that at that time I was still a deputy in the Assembly of Madrid, which, as is well known, left me out in the following elections, for raising my voice in the face of unreason and defending what my political formation reflected in the statutes. The rest are only spurious arguments in favor of personal interests and histrionic egos, something that at the present date is already public and notorious, since if it was good in 2019 the same cannot be aberrant in 2022, as brief in the contradiction as that .
Sincerely, I hope that whoever has been my party until today reconsiders, because the battles against the human rights of a sector of the social fabric have always been called to be lost. Although the screaming overwhelms and scares, the satisfaction of doing, acting and being on the right side of history will always be more than recognized. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero himself, at present, says that the Equal Marriage Law is the one for which he is most congratulated on the street, although at the time he got half a million people against him. Here, the most they have achieved is 60 people in single file in front of Congress, so we must reflect on the scarcity of numbers and the inherited power they have in the media speakers. But, mainly, because after a year everything will have dissolved like a handful of soot in the middle of the sea.
I exhort and call on the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to put the Law back in its place, as he did at the time, to close the deadlines for amendments and to continue the urgent procedure, for the word given and the commitment acquired. . Because socialism if it is not brave is not socialism, as Pedro Zerolo said, and so that the "Comprehensive Trans and LGTBIQ+ Law" is Law.
Prolonging it will only cause more pain and suffering to people who have definitely been marked with a -Star of David- on their foreheads in the XNUMXst century, something that will be remembered from the ignominy and deep shame of a country that he looked the other way when part of his community was persecuted and humiliated in an inhuman and gang-like manner.
For all that, not in my name and that of my militancy, today, I say the same as 16 years ago, I prefer to go down the street and look my trans colleagues in the face than bow my head in shame for having betrayed, and what is worse, having betrayed myself, which is when nothing is left and life loses its meaning. It didn't happen then and it won't happen now."
Carla Antonelli, LGTBIQ+ activist and first trans woman deputy in Spain.