A demonstration demands that the trans law be accelerated before the rise of "fascism"

International Trans Memory Day has been celebrated every year in various countries around the world since 1998 to remember those people who have been victims of transphobia. Since 2008, 14 trans people have been murdered in Spain, two of them in 2020, according to the registry of the Observatory of Murdered Trans Persons, from the Trans Respect platform, which has accounted for a total of 4,042 reported cases worldwide up to September of this year. Of those more than 4,000 murders that have been recorded, 375 have occurred in the last year and 96% of the victims were women or female transgender people.

According to the latest report on the evolution of hate crimes in Spain, published by the Ministry of the Interior, in 2020 277 cases were registered. It is one less than the previous year, prior to confinement, and represents more than 20% of the total. Discrimination not only comes in the form of direct violence, but also through other spheres, such as the workplace. Various reports reveal that trans people have a harder time accessing a job than cisgender people. According to a UGT study, published this summer, 80% of trans people are unemployed and almost 70% fear recognizing their gender identity at work.

"Trans rights are human rights," dozens of people have chanted, who have walked the Gran Vía from Pedro Zerolo Square, in Chueca, after a banner that read that "against fascism, trans law." A claim that takes into account the rise of the extreme right and, in the Community of Madrid, the fear that the PP will repeal the regional LGTBI laws. But also the "threat to fine people who use inclusive language" in the Region of Murcia, denounces Cambrollé.

"The Government cannot leave us abandoned to the adventure of other formations," says the president of the Federation of trans groups of the Spanish state Plataforma Trans, which asks to settle "the debt with trans people." "We don't want more, but neither do we want less," he claims.

"We are not going to allow the expansion of a law that comes late and that comes to compensate and repair the debt with trans people," explains Cambrollé. Collectives in defense of trans people demand that this draft law be improved in three key aspects: the inclusion of trans migrants, non-binary identities and that it does not leave out trans childhoods.

Elena Fernández is the mother of a trans minor. He has attended the demonstration because "there is much left to ensure that everything is the same in society" and because he is concerned about "the fat entry of parties with fascist overtones" on the political scene.

In 2019, the Constitutional Court estimated that trans minors with sufficient maturity could register their sex change, something that the new trans and LGTBI law does not contemplate, as Cambrollé indicates, which warns with reaching the European Court of Human Rights if they are not includes this claim: "We ask for the right to identity and that our childhoods are not mistreated."

Non-binary identities are also left out of the blueprint. Cris Sol, a 23-year-old young man, was demonstrating this Saturday "for trans memory", but also to ask that his identity be included in the DNI. "Our claim is the right to be and respect," he says. "We are not included at all and we cannot change the name," he laments, surrounded by a group of colleagues. "We think it will take time (to be included)," he explains, but his priority is to go "step by step" so that "trans people get their rights."

Last June, the Government approved the draft of the new 'trans law', merged with the LGBTI. A rule that generated tensions within the coalition government and maintains the opposition of a sector of the feminist movement, contrary to the self-determination of gender, which allows trans people to make the registry change without providing evidence or the testimony of third parties.

These tensions have been present in the march, where it has been repeatedly chanted that "transphobia is not feminism" and the opposition of the former Vice President of the Government, Carmen Calvo, to gender self-determination has been recalled, considering that it does not guarantee "legal certainty".

The president of the FELGTBI +, Uge Sangil, has insisted these days that "the processing of the Law cannot be delayed any longer" and has asked that the "rights of trans migrants be recognized, the recognition of reality does not binary or the rights of trans minors ", which are" more clearly recognized in other legislation ", but which the draft presented by the Ministry of Equality leaves, for the moment, outside the norm.