 for example, the Etira Collective Archive. This is a group of sex workers that just disappeared. But these are objects with high memorial value or the pink sachets in which they handed out condoms. So the main problem is that intangible memory is key, the memory of spaces, of locations, of music. And I think that the challenge that we have ahead is to generate new stories, new narratives by incorporating different sources of information because sometimes, for example, prisons in Tefia, the agricultural colony where homosexuals were imprisoned by the Franco regime, that is being recovered as a memory site or in Torremolinas, the Begoña passage. I mean, there are some spaces that are being recovered, but sometimes the interpretation is not very accurate. What we need to do is to build new narratives about spaces, about locations on the basis of objects, references, cultural references, literary work. It's the only way we have to recover that intangible memory that has been key and that we need to recover. Thank you. Hi, a slight change of topic. My name is Kai. I'm just a high school student, so maybe it's a stupid question. But I wanted to know that most of these monuments are pretty normative. And this lack of representation of trans, non-binary, and even the intersexual collectives, it's a kind of erasure that our community has been suffering always. And the question is basically, what do we do with it? What do we do with the lack of representation of the non-binary and trans identities in the artistic areas and the lack of popularization of the existing representation of it? Thank you. Sorry. It's difficult to give an answer. How can I tell you what is to do to make things better? Perhaps I can answer with some thoughts about how memorials in public space work. When we look back to memory development in the public space, we can always see that the representation in public space comes late. It comes always much later than historical research, than discussions in the public, in the university, in the grassroots movements, in the initiatives. It comes late. We have, at the moment, in Germany and especially in Berlin, although this very difficult debate, why is the topic of colonialism and the crimes of German colonialism not really arrived in public space? We have researchers for about six or seven years. We have groups, initiatives, we have this and that. In the center of Berlin, we have only one single memorial plate at the place where, in 1886, the German Reich and 12 other nations came together to decide what they make with Africa, which is a huge story. I'm sure that there will also monuments to come in the next years, but maybe this will take some time and competition and different ideas. I hope that also what you say now, the lack of representation in the public space will come later. I don't know how to enforce it. We could increase the public budget to invest. Memory is always low cost, maybe not in Germany. But if you take Spain as a reference, we have a lot of problems in Spain and in Catalonia too. In Germany, we don't have enough money for many memorials. We have the big state monuments, that's right. They are very representative and some kind of problematic too. In this tent, between the central national level and the small projects, there is a big difference. But we don't have a national level and we don't have a small project. It's always a very big debate. But we can begin also with, I mean, for example, in Catalonia, the nomenclature has been told and these kind of symbolic changes could be changing, first of all, the references in the public space. But it will take such a long time. More questions and we will bring this to a close. Before I forget. In the garden, in the garden, if I don't forget to tell you. Last question and with this we wrap up Stephanie's presentation on this Q&A. Hello, I'm Charlie. I'm from the International Studies Barcelona Institute and I will ask in English because I feel more comfortable. It was very interesting. You referred to the idea of LGBT rights as democratic or at some point they were conflated with ideas of democracy. Do you think maybe we need to have caution in doing these things because it leads us to view LGBT rights as something western or occidental focused just as the idea of democracy? Do you think that we do need to have caution when we talk about these things because otherwise it removes the internationalisation of LGBT rights and makes us view them more as a western concept? Was that a question? Yeah, I'm not sure if this was a question or a statement. I think it was a statement, right? No, I'm sorry. Maybe you speak very quick in English. You were asking for the international context and international... Yes, of course. This is a big problem because we have countries where even the existence of being homosexual or lesbian, especially homosexual, is an existential problem for life and they have death penalties. We should not forget how heavy problems are compared to ours. That's what you mean? Yeah, and we have to look at those countries, right? Thank you. So we wrap up now. Thank you very much for your attention. The symbolism of this triangle is for organisations, civil society, the government and everyone else can keep making headway in this discussion. Thank you very much. See you later. I think it's about time we begin. Thank you once more for being here. We shall continue after the outstanding presentation by the keynote speaker, Stephanie Endlich. And this panel discussion has three speakers, even though they are just one, because they have prepared these into three into one presentation with the three researchers we have with us. Camille Kaszewski from Poland, Ricardo Bulgarelli from Italy, and then Moises Fernandez-Cano from Madrid, Spain. They are all researchers at the European University Institute, one of the most prestigious research centres in Europe, in Firenze, in Italy. And they will tell us how the LGBTQ community in these three countries have fought for their rights throughout the 20th century, but they will also focus on the way we remember these struggles and the way that these communities and their achievements are remembered. We will also talk about the terms, the terminology that we've been using when preparing, when designing the agenda for this conference, and this was a long-standing discussion with the researchers but also with the Catalan government supporting this meeting. And we will tell you why we have chosen for the LGBTQ+, or LGBTI+, whether you are incorporating the Q or the I. This is something that we will talk about later on, maybe, opening up the floor for discussion. And I hope that the three researchers here also tell us about the title on this panel discussion, Chantilly State. And this is a title taken from one of the iconic statements by a queer figure that's from RuPaul's. And so the three researchers that we have here with us have chosen this topic as a nod to the queer world. So I'll hand it over to Camille now. Hello. I will stand if it will not disturb you. It's much easier for me to focus and also to observe the presentation. So we will talk about remembering memories in three European countries. For those that are not familiar with the title Chantilly State, it refers, as Oriole mentioned before, to one of the most famous TV shows where contestants, drag queens, fight for the title of the best drag queen, every episode, at the end of the episode, the jury that consists of, let's say, queer celebrities decides who of the contestants should go home and who should stay. And of course, it's a big tension. The person that is lucky to stay, here's from the head of the jury, Chantilly State, and it kind of became a very symbolic, iconic moment. For us, it seemed very interesting because it's a moment that can be a metaphor of a situation where queer community itself decides who we can memorize or who we pay attention to and who we kind of drop in our narratives. So it's not the decision of the mainstream or the majority, but of the community itself, and I think this topic will appear several times. I wanted to ask you in the beginning, do you know, starting my presentation about Poland or queer history in Poland, do you know when Poland decriminalized homosexual acts in what year, or do you have a guess? What would be your intuition? In 1932, Poland was the second country in the 20th century after the Soviet Union that decriminalized homosexual acts, was quite a pioneer. This man is the head of the commission that decided to decriminalize. Actually, the decision was taken already in the early 20s, but there were other more controversial issues for them to discuss. So it took around 10 years before the criminal code that you can see on the left entered into force. We decided to start with kind of very short overview of European history of queer from a perspective that I think we are not so familiar with. Usually we are presented with a map of Europe that tells a narrative of marriage equality or civil partnerships, and this narrative is very familiar, and I think very often presents not such a challenging story where we have several pioneers among them, Spain also I think, but also Denmark, Holland, the countries that started, and then of course the ugly sister called Eastern Europe. However, when we think about the criminalization of homosexual acts in Europe I think this narrative presents us with something much more challenging and especially challenging our imagination of different parts of the continent. When we look in the beginning of the 20th century, and of course the political map as we know was completely different, we had actually two systems. One consisting of so-called, let's say, Southern Europe, that was based on Napoleonic codes, that traditionally didn't criminalize homosexual acts as such. Although sometimes people, especially men, were persecuted based on other reasons, vagabondism or indecent behavior, let's say. However, they were not targeted as a group. And then the other part of Europe that was targeting actually this group, what was mentioned before by Stefanie, the paragraph 175 in Germany, paragraph 129 in Austria, for example, and then were also these actually two examples in Europe, Austria and Sweden that criminalized homosexual acts between women, which was quite unique and this is still a controversy why and what was the reason. Then what happens around after the First World War, what I call the first wave of the criminalization. And here is the, actually this is the proper map, Soviet Union or Soviet Russia starts this trend in 1917, then in 1932 Poland the criminalized homosexual acts, the next year with actually the same legal provisions Denmark, in 1942 Switzerland, in 1944 Sweden, around the, in the thirties still Estonia as well, that is often forgotten, and Iceland. And it happens actually, this process kind of ends by the end of the Second World War. Paradoxically it starts in German speaking area where the activism was unsuccessful, it came very close to the criminalization in Germany, in Weimar Republic at the end of the 1920s beginning of the thirties, and of course the Hitler came to power and all the idea collapsed. However, it very much influenced other countries. Such activists like Magnus Hirschfeld traveled several times for example to Estonia, to Lobby for the change of the law. They had also influence on the change of law, especially in Denmark, but also in Poland. What happens next is just a year after Poland the criminalized homosexuality with the tightening grip of power in Soviet Union, the Soviet Union recriminalizes homosexuality. Then of course with the territorial expansion the law is expanded to Estonia. After the Second World War also Spain and Portugal actually end this kind of more liberal tradition, and as far as I know in 1954 Francoist Spain criminalizes homosexuality as well. And then we have something that I call the second wave of the criminalization, and it happens between mostly mid-60s and 80s. 83 Portugal is the country that decriminalizes homosexuals again, 79 Spain. There is this wave especially in the 60s and 70s only partially related to so called sexual revolution in countries like the United Kingdom and Germany. However the countries on the other side of the Iron Curtain, especially Czechoslovakia and the time Hungary and Bulgaria are a bit earlier. So for example Eastern Germany decriminalized homosexual acts a year before Western Germany. Interestingly yes among those that were lagging behind were Austria in 1971, 72 before I mentioned Norway. This all is happening around 30 years after the criminalization of homosexuality in Poland. And then in the 1990s with the collapse of Cold War system, and we have this what I call the third wave of the criminalization with all the new countries, but also Ireland as far as I remember 1994 or Liechtenstein, which is a small addition. So actually when we look at this map we can see that it is a kind of a different narrative that we usually have when we talk about marriage equality. That is kind of across the Iron Curtain and across a lot of concepts that we have about Europe. So coming focusing a bit on Poland and I know that it may seem a far away topic and maybe some of you have never heard anything about history of queer in Poland. So just to shortly mark or signal the timeline, the term homosexuality in Poland emerges in 1893 and is quite smoothly just translated from German by a Polish student of Kraft Ebbing, a famous founder of sexology, commonly perceived today as a founder of sexology. So his student is just introducing the term in Polish. But already in 1917, 1915, 1917 we have first novels, short stories that actually show written by queer people and presenting queer desire in an affirmative way. Then we have inter-war period when Poland gains independence between 1918 and 1939 and for example in 1923 there is quite a scandal in Warsaw related to a lesbian doctor, one of first physicians in Poland. And during the trial she openly claims that being a lesbian is not offensive, it's not denigrating for a woman. And in 1932 as I mentioned there is the criminalization. Then we have periods of course of the Second World War, pink triangles, a big different topic on its own and what happens after the Second World War is of course the time of communism. What in official narratives especially in Polish historiography is never mentioned but what is very typical as I believe with my queer eye, I look at Polish history, there were certain similarities and features that really made conservative, Catholic, right-wing side of political spectrum very similar to the communist regime and one of them was basically being very prurient. So talking or showing publicly any kind of non-normative behaviors was not accepted. We have to remember that in 1920s in Warsaw they were men in drag, we have a movie, quite a famous movie from 1930s with basically a drag queen. We had transgender sex workers in the streets, they all disappear in the mid-30s and they actually don't reappear until the end of the communist time. And in 1983 there is an attempt to start a movement again in Poland. There is an activist, actually an immigrant in Austria, in Vienna, who writes, prepares a magazine in his home in Vienna, copies it and distributes illegally in Poland and this is the beginning of kind of this new wave of queer movement. In mid-1980s we have an action operation of the police that was made to a movie recently on Netflix called Hyacinth went police on state scale tries to register all homosexuals but then it's the end of the communism. It was probably also related to the starting AJV crisis but it hasn't been basically researched what happened during the operation. And I put as a symbolic date, this date 2020, last presidential election in Poland when it was for the first time so explicitly and openly deployed homophobia as a political tool to win elections but it also galvanized the queer community or LGBT community in Poland. So to make it short we don't have much time. I wanted to, when thinking about commemorating and about memory, what Stefanie was talking about before, I was thinking there are three kind of ways the queer community in Poland refers to the past. One is commemorating victims of persecution, that's what we very much talked about in the context of monuments, right? Especially the pink triangles, the second world war. Then the other stream is very often by the queer community treated as something opposite of not showing martyrology and not showing suffering but rather showing an affirmative narrative that would focus on recovering forgotten stories or basically outing very famous personalities in Poland from the past. That's why I put this pride tag there. And then third way is this of course fighting for rights and citizenship and belonging trying sometimes to gain legitimacy and respectability through for example performing attachment to the nation, to the state and to the values of the majority. And the right-wing answer and since the last, actually yes, since the fall of the communists we can say the answer from the majority and from the government to this kind of strategy is either ignoring or silencing very often presenting whenever the queer subjects try to say we are part of the nation or the country actually the answer from the other. No, it's a foreign. A very typical motif is saying that it's something that comes from the west. It's a western invention. I think this was partially your question before. Something that is imposed on Poland. So I very shortly show as Stefanie Endlich mentioned before apart from this tormented story of the rainbow in Warsaw which has its continuation now. The debate is going on to rebuild it again in a different form and it's kind of a grassroots movement. There are no monuments in the public and they are not really disputed. I don't know, I know some activists in Poland obviously and this never appears as a topic. I think also the assumption is that it's too difficult and not the most important thing now when there are no rights for example legal protection. But one of the ways of commemorating is this mostly grassroots movement of memorizing, commemorating the history and in this case is the history. For example, this is the book that was published last year. They homosexuals during the Second World War. The title is They. It has been actually a few days ago nominated to the most prestigious literally prize in Poland which was kind of a surprise. However, there are other examples of kind of entering the public opinion, public memory. Another way as I mentioned before is recovering forgotten silence or stories queer lives. The picture that you have here is Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. He was one of the most important writers in Poland of the second of the 20th century. Some claim that actually allegedly the most important, the most important, the most prolific writer. He had a wife. We know now from the letters that she was also sometimes into women. They had children. They were a loving couple. He had also relations with many men during his life and actually the adjective queer, I think very well describes life of Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. So several years ago some publications starting basically writing about it openly. Part of this was pictures that were found of Yankee Iwaszkiewicz taken by his friends showing actually quite a vivid life of homosexual or community, let's say in the 1920s and 30s in Poland. And this is this other kind of focus in memorizing, not on the suffering but on this kind of affirmative way of showing actually many famous people in Polish history were actually queer. These are the other examples. It's a very popular book, Homo Biografie, Homo Biografis. These are very short biographies collected of like really most important Polish public figures in the 20th century. Olga Tokarczuk, the Nobel Prize winner, I think two, three years ago, commented here on the top. I think Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz now finally in the Kevin can say finally. So the book, when the book was published. But this is again an idea of showing, we've been part of the nation or the part of Polish culture. Here is another book by a friend actually about the doctor, the female doctor that was accused of being lesbian as I said before. Her first kind of biography or the writing about the trial. And the third thing that I said is this kind of trying to be included in the nation. I think this is a picture taken a year ago during a pride in Kraków. What I noticed and was very striking for me, it was not the only flag of this kind, there were several flags which integrated Polish flag with the rainbow flag. By kind of as a way of saying we are part of this country, we belong to the country. And of course by many conservatives it was perceived as an attack or actually desecrating of Polish flag. However, a lot of LGBT people in Poland are also very attached to nationalism, we have to remember. And at the end I wanted to show two case studies to show how this playing with memory or using memory as a political tool and the fight for queer rights is used. One is this most famous. So what happened, the most famous one when the clashes happened, the fights in the streets riots in 2020 in Warsaw. There was a kind of a long preludium to these events. And between 2019 and 2020 a peculiar idea was born in some, I don't know even where, in some conservative circles, to proclaim a singular small communities and municipalities in country as LGBT free zones. Soon around 100, almost 100 communities declared themselves LGBT free zones. As you can see on the map, some of them, actually I think the green ones, are those that actually either withdrew later or they kind of resigned from the idea. So it was also not so obvious. Sometimes they were debated and there were no enough votes in the communities. But many of them, the red ones, actually the initiatives were successful. So the sentiment was kind of declared and it was used by the current president of Poland during his last campaign, presidential campaign when he was basically very unsure of winning. He was kind of losing in the polls. And he deployed then the LGBT homophobic, anti-LGBT homophobic speech, thinking that he was smart, but it was of course something that hasn't been used in Europe on that scale, I think since the Second World War. And I think most of people, or we try to believe that we are aware that you don't use these things for political purposes. But he did and he succeeded. He won the election. Famously he said, for example, LGBT people are not people. They are an ideology. And it galvanized these protests and started the protest that happened. The picture that I had earlier of the woman with the flag, this is from the protests. And part of this protest was several days of riots and protesting in the streets, blocking several places. But what happened in, I think, August 2020, there was a turn in Polish movement, Activism in Poland, which always has been actually pacific. As most of Europe, as Austria for example, there have never been a stone wall in Europe. This is an American story. But what happened is this group of young activists, they said they don't believe anymore in this peaceful thing. This doesn't work. This didn't bring anything in Poland. And they started kind of more provocative actions. And one of them was taking rainbow flags and putting them in Warsaw attaching them to the most important symbolic monuments. So it was kind of changing a bit the monument, makeshift sculpture, let's say. And one of them was putting them on Jesus with the cross, which is a highly symbolic place in Warsaw. It is in front of the church where there is a heart of Friedrich Chopin, which was smuggled by his sister after his death in the 19th century, so the very important for the culture of the country. But also it was destroyed by the Nazis during the Warsaw uprising in the church. And this picture is actually super famous. I think every child sees it in the school of like fallen sculpture of Jesus destroyed by Nazis, so desecrated in front of the destroyed church after the Warsaw uprising in 1944. So what the activists did, they claimed the statue and attached the flag and to add several other documents, monuments in Warsaw. And there was a response from the government. So I think the next day even, or the second, the prime minister said it was desecration of the sculpture. He published a picture of himself praying in front of the, I think kneeling in front of Jesus, and he put, he left like the candle. You can see that that's prime minister on the right from the sculpture. He left a candle with like official candle of the government. And here are the activists that I mentioned. They're fairly young people and a transgender leader, actually non-binary person, very challenging for the society and for the conservative. What they did as a response, they stole the candle and they carried it to the bridge in the middle of Warsaw when a year ago transgender person committed suicide. And posted it everywhere, which of course the media then took over and reposted almost everywhere. And they wrote, you idiot, you should put the candle here. And this is the person, this is Milo, this transgender person that committed suicide jumping from the bridge into the Wistula River in 1919. I think it was winter, so also the water was ice cold. You know, it's Poland. Everything is quite harsh, also the winter. And unfortunately, of course, the person died but left a letter when she explained her frustration with the system, but actually with psychologists, doctors, therapists who tried to fix her. And that's the candle, it's written, you know, there is a flag, there is a coat of arms, it's written the prime minister. So they took this candle and symbolically put it in the place where they believed, and I believe that it should be. And that's another way of, a very similar way of intervening into the public space. Here is Maria Konopnicka, another famous writer. Don't be surprised, it's not only an impression, like a lot of Polish public figures and a lot of Polish literature was written by queer people. Some people claim too much further than any literature in Europe. So Maria Konopnicka is a very famous nationalist writer, like very important for this patriotic early 20th century discourse of Polish nationalism. But she also had a partner, they lived like in a marriage, we have correspondence between them, I was a loving couple. Of course, that was not even a time where terms like homosexual were used. So we don't know how they perceived themselves. However, we know they lived together until they death, and yeah, there was a couple. So what some activists do, and it's not only with Maria Konopnicka, they put, for example, flags, or here coloring the, putting some rainbow symbols around these monuments. And there is always a response from above. So for example, this is very early. Actually, this is 2022. Polish parliament proclaimed the year 2022, the year of Maria Konopnicka. Of course, not mentioning at all any connection to queer or rainbow symbols or LGBT rights, but rather, of course, using Polish flag and kind of trying to bring her back to the nationalist heterosexual narrative. And that's it. I think I'm afraid I went a bit over time. I hope we can, of course, discuss if you have any questions. I'm sorry if it was a bit scattered. I had to make hard decisions, and especially I think when, since Stefanie Endlich was talking about monuments, she was thinking that we have also these monuments or ways of memorizing, as you could see here, that are kind of makeshift. They appear, disappear, people write things on the walls, and sometimes they are much more challenging and challenged and much more provocative than monuments that have been decided by the community. Because, for example, obviously, like in this case, putting a flag, attaching it to Jesus is an extremely powerful, powerful act. I can only present in the margin that it doesn't seem it was as provocative as we could thought because the transgender activist, Margot, she wrote, I think, her dissertation, or even PhD dissertation, I'm not so sure now, maybe master dissertation, about Catholicism. She always claims she's a deeply believing Catholic, at the same time fighting for LGBT rights. I hope you liked it. Thank you very much, and now I give my voice to Marzos. So, can you hear me? I think so. You can hear me in the room? Okay, so I will applaud you guys because I'm lazier than Camille, so I will remain seated. I hope you don't mind, and I will start my presentation with a picture that probably all of you know, or if you don't know, it's from Barcelona. It's really well known, and it's one of the big memories of the struggles in the Spanish state fighting for the sexual elevation movements. But my presentation won't focus on this history, and actually I will move quite away from this perspective on sexual elevation movements because my perspective on my approach to queer history is quite different. I say in my title, Umbiling the Ordinary, the Importance of Everyday Stories in Collective Memory, because, and I will get a little personal here, I grew up in a southeastern province in Albacete. Then I moved to Valencia when I was 18 years old to study history. Then I did my master thesis here in Barcelona. During the six years of history studies, nobody mentioned in any class anything about LGBTQ history. I just remember in my master thesis, one seminar about democratic transition in Spain, and they mentioned that LGBTQ struggles was just a part of the transition movements, and they don't actually regard to the specific issues that the LGBTQ communities were suffering under Francois regime. But first, I want to start with a little story. So the 21st of December of 1957, in Madrid, in Plaza Mayor, that is one of the main historical landmarks in the city right now, maybe well known because one mayor a few years ago recommended people to have a cafe con lechin in Plaza Mayor. Maybe you know the city for that. Well, a group of 20 to 25 years old men were having fun. It was 11 p.m. You can imagine the winter in Madrid is quite cold. So the police noticed that they were actually having like this party in the streets of Madrid in a historical landmark. And it's not like now that it's full of restaurants and bars and it's full of tourists. In that moment actually was one of the main points for men hustlers and for actually prostitution and solicitation. So it was not the historical monument it is today. It was more a place for bagos imaleantes. So this group was detained by the police and one of the young men was arrested, prosecuted and got to the Dirección General de Seguridad in Puerto Al Sol. The current govern of Madrid is used to be the security center where gay people was arrested. And when they were actually processing this guy they discovered that he has some pictures. And these pictures are actually those I saw in you. I blur the face because I want to keep the anonymity of this guy but this story is telling us something that actually we cannot know and we won't never know because one of the pictures, the first one, seems this guy with a flower and if you don't have the blur image actually he was having makeup. In the other picture we can see the same guy processing with another guy and the third picture shows maybe just two friends in the bridge maybe something else. What I want to do with this. So usually when we think about a history of LGBT communities or queer communities we think about the history of sexual liberation movements and this is really important because it's the history of how actually we fight against some decriminalizations and criminalizations in different parts of Europe and the world and we commemorate these struggles. Sometimes this approach also forgets about other aspects of our queer memory. For example, one of different approaches is working on queer memories through local histories. Local histories could seem like narrow in the sense that we are focusing on a specific city in a specific place like Madrid, Barcelona, New York and one of the first examples of this was Gay New York in 1994. It was one of the main books regarding a specific place. Then we have other examples like Queer London in 2005 but we have recently other examples like Queer Budapest but we have works like this about other cities like Berlin we have even more works on London with different perspectives, different stories and for example about Barcelona we have the book Los Antisociales of Joffrey Huart it's not based just in Barcelona it compares Paris and Barcelona but it includes a lot of places and these books even if they of course tangled with the history of repression the history of legal frameworks they also work with the quotidian because local history from below, not just from the administration and from justice system also from a daily basis so from the quotidian perspective of queer people whether using oral archives or traditional archives used from the idea of the quotidian rebuilds experiences and stories that traditionally remain outside the historiographic narrative if we try to find the history of queer people in history books we will probably find maybe a mention to the LGBTQ struggles in the 70s and this is really important but we hardly find any mention of actually how queer people lived before these struggles and there is a problem here that we can discuss later but we are thought from a teleological point of view what I mean with this we know what happened already we know that in the 70s there was a historical political movement that fight for our freedom and that we get some rights and we are still fighting for more rights and we are fighting against some ideas that are coming back from the past but people in 62 of 57 like this guy I saw you in the picture they didn't know that in the 70s there was a liberation movement and they were still queer people and they were still having queer lives queer sex, queer intimacies and queer memories that are also important because it's part of our common history and it's part of our community so therefore putting the focus on these histories of these stories, the quotidian histories makes visible the invisible the ignore realities but also helps us to problematize the diversity or non-presence of queer people in the public space in the streets of our cities and also brings out other issues such as class or migration usually if you take a random history book they don't mention queer people it's like suddenly in the 70s we rise up we fight for our rights but before that it seems that we were invisible we were nowhere in the cities and you will discover how many places how many struggles how many daily fights they had in their daily lives before these 70s uprisings and one more methodological and conceptual important issue for me is that queer lives always occupy a public space queer people we don't have in history actually the right to have a privacy to have a private life society and even ourselves scrutinize everything we do so our bodies our lives are always public lives so either at home either at streets we are public bodies and it means that streets public venues, cities but also home belongs to the domesticity of queer people so when we talk about queer histories we should have to talk about this queer domesticity in a broad sense because we didn't have the right to have a private space for ourselves because even either families even the state, even the police forces they were always scrutinizing and looking for what we do, how we do and how we belong where my research focus obviously in Spain and I do the local history of Madrid because for me it's easier to understand the sources in Spanish so it's why I work on Madrid and because actually we lack in the Spanish state we hardly know anything about even Barcelona that is maybe the most known of the cities but recently there are a lot of people working across the Spanish state to recover this memory and I think this is kind of echoing what we were discussing previously in the discussions about what kind of objects, what kind of materiality we can have to recover because of course we know the legal framework we know the Ley de Vagos Imaleantes and we know the Ley de Piedro de Riosidad Rehabilitación Social that actually affected the lives and the daily experiences of queer people but it doesn't mean that before 1954 there were no prosecutions of queer people of course they were prosecuted under so many others like public scandal or yes we cannot think that before Franco there was not homophobia, of course homophobia was something quite real and I want to take two other cases two other examples to show you how actually local history can provide a lot of reference to different topics that go beyond the legal framework that even if it's important and of course these sources I get from the files that are under the Ley de Vagos Imaleantes in Madrid so I use the legal sources but with a point of view of the quotidian and the daily lives so this fair case actually is really really complex but I will bring you some points that I think they're interested this is file 576 and file 104 is the same case one of the files is for one of the people involved and the other file is for the other people involved actually this is one of the cases of two women that I found so it's a case of female homosexuality and I think this case not just because it's one case about lesbianism condemned under the Ley de Vagos Imaleantes that sometimes we think that as was mentioned before that there's like a whole about history of female sex female to female sex we find different aspects for example I have a quote from this file starting to touch her everywhere and kissing her in the lips behaving like a man having sex with a woman this contains pages and pages and pages and when I say pages is that actually you can wrote a book just about this case because the doctors and the judges they really were trying to understand how two women were having sex they really were surprised that women were having sex they could not even imagine so part of the file is not actually to accuse them is to prove how actually they have sex because if there is a lack of penis here and we're talking about this female it's not about transgender female they thought okay we cannot accuse them because there is a lack of penis so there is no actually sexual intercourse but at the end there is a psychiatric forensic report on one of the women the older one involved in this situation that apparently was menly he was short stature more rude the way she behaves is more menly so finally they decided that this woman should be prosecuted maybe she induced the other woman who was a female younger woman and maybe she is the big thing we have one person to blame but she was only blamed under the basis that he was menly so to be considered as someone who be prosecuted there was like gender bias so this approximation to local history is having a lot of information for us how actually Francoism regime and actually it's challenged the idea of a woman being menly means that it's a woman or not and they have this kind of discussions already in the 60s but also is talking us about how actually the idea of being the manly part of a lesbian relationship could have other consequences different than to the other because if we follow the case the older woman, the menly woman was actually condemned and she has to pay a bill to go through jail while the other woman that finally said that she was actually just mad and she was attracted by the manly of the elder so it was not her fault it was just a moment of I don't know how to say because she used a specific word moment of the video but apparently this moment of stays for at least two to three years having sex with the woman so I think maybe it's not a moment of but of course she was fighting for her life she was fighting for her freedom so we cannot actually condemn this person for trying to get free but also this story is telling us much more because one of the things when we talk about in the case of the Spanish state is that we usually focus on Madrid and Barcelona I myself I'm doing my PhD on Madrid but none of these women were from Madrid actually from Galicia and the older woman was from Malaga and actually the story of the older woman was quite interesting she was born in La Jaron sorry the province of Granada but she moved quite young to Malaga and in Malaga she tried to become a nun but she was expelled by the monastery with all the two women there is a letter from the bishop of Malaga talking about this situation and they didn't mention why they were leaving the monastery but apparently there was some strange behaviors between the three of them and then they moved to actually to Barcelona they live here there are no much records on what they did in Barcelona and finally they moved back to Madrid and in Madrid they opened a boarding house a hostel for young ladies and this boarding house was in the city center really close to the actual parliament of Spain in Carrada San Jerónimo and it was a meeting for ladies what it happens there we don't know but maybe a closer look to the local history of Madrid will reveal how a lot of lesbian women coming from different parts of Spain were having connections there or not because one, this case started when this lady from Galicia moved to Madrid starting living there and apparently after a few months living there the older woman from La Jaron start to have more intimacy with them and the older lady pays for a really rich room and they start going to actually to La Jaron for holidays and people in La Jaron start gossiping about them because apparently they were having sex all the time sexual parties orges so this is talking about migration and different directions because we usually think about rural spaces going to the big cities but in this case we have of course someone who goes from La Jaron to Málaga to Barcelona then to Madrid but from Madrid they usually go on holidays to La Jaron and in La Jaron a rural space they were actually having quite a lot of sex apparently according to the files and my last case that also brings a lot of topics to discuss is a really complex topic a student, medicine student from Canary Islands moved to Madrid to get his PhD in medicine and first because he was arrested several times through the 60s the first time he was arrested because he was having sex with different men but he was arrested in many times in history and actually his file is more or less this big so you can also spend like a whole book talking about this guy but it also lets us talk about the connection between different cities for example this guy was involved with another guy who was from Barcelona this guy from Barcelona was rejected by his family so he decided to move to Madrid but he was going and back all the time from Madrid and Barcelona so it talks about actually the connection between two different big cities and how people move looking for some spaces of freedom because of course Barcelona in these years could be a space for freedom but if your family actually rejects you it means that you have to find different ways and we can track the way of this guy that moves not just to Madrid he was arrested different times and finally sometimes we find this guy in Madrid where he is arrested and having connections with him and one thing that surprised me is that this file contains several letters handwriting letters of the guy from Canary Islands writing to the guy to the family of the guy from Barcelona asking the parents of this guy from Barcelona to reject another guy apparently the guy who was from Barcelona has different boyfriends and the guy from Canary was apparently one of these boyfriends and he was jealous of the other so this guy asked the family in Barcelona please could you tell your son that he would be better with me of course he doesn't use the word boyfriend but you can see from the words that they have emotional connection but this case even become more interesting because in the middle of the 60s the guy from Canary Islands is again arrested and in this case is involved another guy in Madrid and they have a connection and they are interrogated they have like a long long interrogation file and they talk about who they know in Madrid who is also queer the police was trying to get information about other queer people and they mention a German guy and the story of this German guy is actually quite interesting I have the beginning of the declaration of the German for reasons of anonymity but you can read here declaration del detenido in the year 1900 statement of the detainee in 1954 he left western Germany because he had been charged with homosexuality twice he went to Switzerland he spent more than one year and he was arrested by the Swiss police and then he goes through France down to Spain where he enters illegally in 1956 through the mountains he went to Madrid to be a founding partner a way to actually recognize who is this person but Sita en la calle in Serrano street we have a person from western Germany coming to Spain in the 50s looking for freedom it's something that when I was reading it it was really hard to understand but we have to understand that in that moment actually homosexuality was also prosecuted in western Germany in a really different way but if he remains in Germany he would be in jail so why he decided to come to Spain not because the situation in Spain was better no of course not it's nothing related to that but there was a sort of kind of privilege that we can find in the files of local histories that are related to class and it related also of region you can find how hardly ever working class people from working class neighborhoods in Spain or in the cities of Spain were already condemned and they went to jail they have to pay really extremely fees or if they were not condemned they pay just to get freedom but in the case of many people from western Europe or even North Americans that live in Madrid or cities such as Barcelona the regime decided to have a different look on them of course if they were caught in a sexual intercourse with another man or another woman they were also condemned and it was also about how actually Spain in this moment, especially from the 60s became a popular destiny for sexual intercourse there are places such as Toremolinos or Sitches that became really important for northern Europeans coming to the Spanish Francoist regime looking for the orientalization of South queer bodies and also because they found somehow spaces for these sexual intercourse it doesn't mean that the Francoist regime of liberation of course not is quite the opposite using this strategy of allowing people from other countries all the realities having spaces of freedom actually was reinforcing the idea that homosexuality was something from abroad so the French the Germans they are queer they are outside the Spanish nation is actually a macho nation so we have not to think and take these stories of people coming from other countries as an example of liberation of course not it's quite the opposite it was actually a quite clever strategy to reinforce the idea of Spain as something unique Spain as something that is the Christian vanguard and it is something to keep actually the idea of Spain is different we know that Manuel Fraga used really cleverly to become and to change the idea of a dictatorial regime in the face of the European Western countries so this is just two examples and with the example with the pictures from Plata Mayor is just three different examples of how we can approach these stories if you see I never mentioned the sexual liberation movements in Spain I never mentioned the legal framework I just mentioned different aspects of people living their lives, struggling fighting and of course having lives because queer people was not just hiding at home they were having lives, they were having sex they were having families, they were having friends and it's something that we also have to recover and when we think about public space and when we think about memory and how recover memory I think we should pay also attention to these aspects because of course the sexual liberation movement is a major issue in our history but if we forget the history of the daily life of the Cotidian we are also giving the historical narratives what they want that they will oblige us from history and that we are not actually part of the common history of the social life of every city and with that I finish, thank you so let's move to the memories of the sexual liberation movement and today I will present the results the memory of an event we organized in the last April as a working group we are three members of a working group the working group is working on queer and feminist studies and we as PHD researchers working on queer different queer and histories we organized this event which was entitled making LGBT last memories and histories and the idea for this event came from the fact that this year 2022 was the first year in which the Italian LGBT history month was established and April was the choice April was the result of a choice of the organization of the LGBT history month why April? April is the month in which in 1972 do you hear me? in 1972 one of the first Italian homosexual movement organized a protest against a congress of sexologists in Sarremo which is a very small city in the north of Italy the idea was to question this choice trying to look at the actors at the ways in which this choice was the result of the production of a collective memory on this event in 1972 besides this we noticed a big public interest in LGBT and queer memories in Italy and so we tried to organize a public discussion in Florence together with the Scuola Normale Superiore in which we gather different actors involved in the production of collective memories and histories to discuss the choice of this month as LGBT plus history month in Italy and to see how the different experiences of queer memories and histories can dialogue and also producing tensions between them so our understanding of memories is some and histories as well which is the result of different actors who can dialogue in different times and places and through their discussions they produced, defined different times and performed as well different understandings of memories so we gather in this event in this public discussion open to the public in Florence four main actors we can say other actors of course but we gather four type of actors as history and sociology researchers as two different perspectives on queer history then there were two local LGBT plus associations active in Florence which have local archives so they are also engaged in producing a sort of space of memory space of sources then there were three activists from the 70s but they are active now with a different type of activism focused on the commemoration focused on the production of exhibitions, museums archives on the history of Italy in the 70s queer Italy in the 70s then there was the audience which was composed mainly by activists and people interested in queer history I would like to focus on the three activists involved because I think it is a crucial element to take into account you can see the three names the three activists were characterized by different backgrounds in terms of gender biography provenance and this is a crucial element to understand how their views on their activism were defined and performed according to their subjectivity and to their experiences in activism because a crucial element to take into account is that compared to the other two presentations is that we are talking now about the history of activism the history of LGBT politics mainly in the 70s Angelo Petzana was the first one of the founders of the first homosexual movement in Italy which was called Fuori and was active between 1971 and 1981 and he was the leader of the group active in Torino in the north of Italy and it was the leader throughout all the entire history of the movement then since the 80s he was engaged in collecting and producing creating an archive of the activity of the movement in order to promote also a cultural history of homosexuality in Italy he founded a foundation which is called Fuori with the aim of having an archive but also to promote the civil rights history of the movement he was also he is the author of two autobiographies in which he linked his experience to the history of the movement which was the second activist he was active in different movement and small groups in Italy since the second half of the 70s we can say and she also became engaged in the movement identity trans which in the 80s was called Italiano transsexuali which is a big difference between the two definitions and now she is part of the city council of the city of Bologna in Italy and she also author of different books in which she links her autobiography to the trans experience as a sort of a way to understand and to observe the queer history in Italy the last speaker was Nerina Milletti she is a feminist and lesbian activist and since the end of the 70s in Florence I forgot was mainly active in Bologna and Nerina Milletti in Florence and Angelo Pezzana in Torino was part of the lesbians groups separatist lesbian groups in Florence since the end of the 70s but then she became an historian so she is very engaged in producing the books articles on LGBT and specifically lesbian history in Italy we can see that all the three are interested in promoting researching or discovering queer history in Italy and this is the reason why we choose these names in our panel I would like to present now their relationship to queer history as I mentioned before the event was organized by two kind of researchers historians and sociologists so we try to frame our questions in a way that we linked past and present starting from an understanding of memories as a sort of understanding how past and present are not linearly connected but are connected in a sort of network and back and forward way I already mentioned this is a photo from Sarremo from the protest at the center of our event but through the question about Sarremo to the three activists we were able to understand their different relationship with history we simply asked what was their relationship with history and the history of Sarremo and they framed their answers in a way linked to their experiences in political activism not only in the 70s but in the following decades Angelo Pezzana framed is the only one who was present in Sarremo who was active in Sarremo who was directly engaged in the protest but he framed his answer in a way that we can understand how his following activism the protest in Sarremo was framed the aim was a revolutionary aim so the beginning from 1971 to 1974 was a revolutionary movement but in the answer of Angelo Pezzana the revolutionary history of the movement was something not mentioned because the movement after 1974 merged in the Partito Radicale who was a civil rights party and so this protest was the history of this protest was framed according to the to the following history of the Fuori so the reformist and civil rights model which the Fuori had since the 1974 on the opposite we can say how who was part of lesbian separatist movement framed his interest in history in queer history as a sort of direct engagement in doing justice with history in looking for lesbian experiences within the Fuori who was which was a movement in which lesbians were active but they were marginalised in some ways and we can say through the words of Nerina Milletti that he's doing his practice of history and his telling of memories are framed according to this aim of doing history to to make visible lesbian, to make visible marginalised experiences the linear account of Angelo Pezzana who was a leader was challenged also by Porpora Marcasciano who in her history of activism in her experiences passed through different experiences of cultural, political and political activism so we can so through we could see through her words how this passes through different micro communities to different places in Italy she comes from the south of Italy and then when she was I think 30 she moved in the north to a different different type of activism and these experiences framed also her way of telling memories so she urged a model of history not based on a linear and objective framework but in type of history made of different narratives to make an example Angelo Pezzana claimed that history is made of fact and so he claimed that the history of the protest in Sarremo which was at the centre of our question was made only by few people and not there are lots of narratives on that protest not true that are false but in opposite to this type of narrative based on fact on an objective understanding of history there are the other two Nerina Milletti who had a sort of engagement in producing history and Pezzana who told that who said that history is made of different narratives in an ongoing debate about understanding I I would try to be sure the interesting thing is that through the dialogue with the audience we were able to see the way in which the activism in our... in Florence now framed the understanding of the of the queer history they asked lots of questions to the activism asking the... with terms like non-binary like which are linked to our days and all the three activists who performed a sort of of distance between them and the new generation this is the reason why I quote generations because they framed their narratives in a sort of distance with a sense of distance between them and the protest that are not able... they are not able to understand now so this is a crucial element to understand and another way is another example is linked to the notion of community lots of people asked how they conceived the notion of community and through the the answers of the three activists we were able to understand that the notion of community is not is not the way... the same in which now is produced as sort of LGBT communities they... refer to community as a movement Norina Milletti refers to community as a sort of micro existential place where people are friends and a very small understanding of community and Barbara Marcaciano refer to community as a place of practices place of struggles with services especially linked to the trans experiences this is only a small explanation of how I understand I am able to frame this kind of dialogue between histories memories and subjectivities and I think that a queer approach could be the only way to challenge a linear a linear way to frame spaces a normative way to frame temporalities through the dialogue between activists, ancient activists, activist researchers we were able to see how the different chronologies are framed by different actors but also how memory is performed as in perceived as a site of struggle as a site to strengthen political and political aim of of movements that are now engaged in LGBT history and also tensions around vocabularies vocabularies are used performed, conceived in different ways according to subjectivities and collective memories are able to change their meanings and then I already mentioned the political aims are framed always through history specialities and in the same way to be short I would say that Italy we cannot frame an Italian queer history but we can frame a plural Italian queer history from the big cities to the local one as Moises said for Spain but through the three experiences we heard in our public discussion we were able to understand how the Italy is not something perceived as a framework as a space of action but micro spaces networks, international networks were the places of activism and then the last slide is linked to the fact that in producing history in producing memories we must be aware that the voices we are able to hear are influenced by intersectionality and power and then all these elements dialogue in a sort of ongoing discussion in which leaders, people who participated in movements, researchers, activists are always engaged and are always in a steady dialogue and it's a sort of power is something linked not only to one of the actors involved but it's spread between different actors and intersectionality is something to take into account to understand why queer history, LGBT history lesbian history, transgender history, gay history are time and again defined in different ways in many times opposite ways but this is something that we have to be aware and the public discussion I'm talking about is an example of that and for thank you I would like to quote an example made by one of the activists she told us that when one of the most famous activists in Stonewall came to Italy she told her that she was not the first one to flying a battle against police but the second one to show how the history and icons chronologies and I don't know narratives are time and again something that are something that depends on the the source of the voice not on the narratives that are produced but not only an objective history but something that is always to be discussed to be performed in different ways Thank you Thank you very much to three of them we have some five minutes for questions and thank you because these have been three examples that in my mind give us quite a good overview on things that could be translated elsewhere in Europe but also elsewhere in the world because with these micro stories they have given us quite a pluralistic view Thank you for relating the past and the present Thank you for linking history and memories through historical research archives, literature now we can go over through I'll give the floor to the audience for some questions before we break from the Carlos presentation where he between the actors you made a difference between the researchers the historical and sociological researchers and the activists like where do you draw the line do you consider yourself to be an activist, do you consider yourself to be an activist where do you draw the line between the researchers and the activists in that sense that's the third one because I frame my scheme of the discussion in this way but I think that there are subjectivity there are people who are intersected by different engagement so academic research can be activism and activism can be academic research but the crucial element to observe is the fact that only through dialogue through the dialogue between different actors so opening academia on the one side and being open to other views on history from the activism side could be a crucial way to understand how memories change but there is no definitive and objective way to frame the division between activism and researcher Good afternoon I would like to talk about the three presentations related precisely on intersectionality I would like to bear in mind Harvey Milk that after Castro after the ghetto he said we need to involve with the society we need to engage with the society otherwise we will always be isolated and so here the Catalan association movement is against the ghetto and against being considered a community unlike some other places in Spain where they rather live in their own areas and happiness so maybe in your presentations I missed mostly the one from Poland is for instance I'm the HIV and I felt like in the TV show it's a scene how the HIV was something that was really important asking for equal marriage was not something that was found there back in the 68 or in Stonewall there was no claim for marriage between same sex that was something as was brought as the people who were dying and the ones that were left had no rights on the partners dying and that was quite an impact on us and the gay people and then on trans community in 2007 along with the Triangle Foundation we organized the conference in 2007 trans were asking for the hormone healthcare treatment also in surgery treatments they were not on non-binary things so there's been an evolution on that regard here and also on the history of Spain I need to refer to Armando Flubia he was the one that he being in a specific social status and he having this possibility for resilience with the homosexual Spanish movement against what was passed in the Spanish law so these shows that there is an interconnection between European countries because it was back then André Brody and Marca Di in France and then Fouaret in Italy these were the three interconnected links that was stemming mostly from the gay community and lesbians I think it would be interesting to look at the Spanish Mengele the Balejo-Rachera and his research on the so-called red lesbian women because it was difficult for him to understand them so I just wanted to point at that and here in Barcelona by the way in the 1930s, Shai Jeanette he enriched himself with the Criolla and the Rascals and the crooks on the Baricino district here in Barcelona thank you I liked all of your lectures a lot I found them all very interesting though I have a bit of an observation about the one on Poland I really liked it I'm so glad that the LGBT community in Poland is active and more combative than ever but I think you were referring to the trans person who killed themselves with she her pronouns when I think I looked it up they mainly used they them so just careful with the misgendering yes thank you there is also the problem of translation in Polish you would not use them or they because you just don't however Polish has different pronouns because there is also Neutrum as in German but Neutrum is something that you can use to animal as well so there is this problem or a challenge in language and also in translation but thank you for bringing it also the thing is that the person is chose for themselves named Milo I think right which is similarly to actually Spanish and Italian you can recognize very often after the name the gender those ending with A are usually female names and with a consonant like male names with O that would be a name for a child or for an animal or for something that is not living and some people offer but why am I explaining it is that there are possibilities in language that are still being explored and it is challenging when we talk about them and of course maybe in English I should refer to the person them thank you just I don't know I think I'll respond to your comment because I was with Armand in December and we have a long discussion maybe I didn't manage to claim this of course this is really important my presentation wanted to focus outside the sexual liberation movements because of course it's part of the narrative but is that we have to enlarge this narrative because other ways we will lose people because of sexual liberation movements is this issue of language the movement at the beginning was a gay liberation movement that in that moment in history we have to understand that actually gay includes things that are not related to gay right now gay right now refers to male to male sexual desire etc while in that moment in history gay could refer actually to the in the sense of queer communities that we understand now from the English perspective so I think that the approach is focusing on the movements that of course in my work I introduce all these names and of course they deserve more than ever to be recognized but also and this is maybe a personal point of view we also have to pay attention to those people who were not able to participate in the 70s because they were not anymore there but they were queer too and they deserve to be recognized historicized and we have to gave them the spacing history that they deserve because for example one of the persons I have in my research he died in 65 so he never knew the sexual liberation movements but he was a gay man he was prosecuted more than 20 times in Madrid and I think telling his history is also making an enmienda in history I don't know how to say in English is that they deserve to be acknowledged too and it doesn't go against the history of the sexual liberation movements it's just they compliment and enlarge the view of histories that's my comment only about terminology the words we use in my presentation I use homosexual movement because the foreign did not use gay they explained the first issues of their magazine what did mean gay because they did know gay is a word they did not use that and so it's interesting to use that and about networks I think that we have to frame spaces and categories of spaces not according to the normative categories of local national international transnational but according to the connection which people were engaged in so I totally agree with you well thank you very much ok thank you very much to all of you let's be back at half past three to watch the film ok we will have Thomas Ryder the film is great freedom and Thomas Ryder is the script writer of the film and he will respond to your questions after the screening and the next session will be the second panel from the local to the global perspective lesbians in Catalonia this evening and hopefully you will all be there too enjoy your lunch and the film we will leave the credits till the end but let's begin because we are a bit late so thank you very much translator to get the questions from the public from the audience so we will have a quick round for Kyu as a nice if there are any questions that you may have and let me say that as Thomas was saying at the beginning this film I think that closely relates to the research work that Moise introduced he was a scientific research but anyway this film was also researching the police records, the police files and it was somehow similar therefore and also same times but different countries, different settings because Germany back then it was a democratic country and yet these things were happening whereas here in Spain we were living under Franco's regime anyway it's not up to me to do the talking so let's draw on the occasion that we have Thomas here with us and just like you were saying at the beginning which I think was interesting maybe you can tell us a bit more for the translation also it's reality what you see in here we found the footage on the beginning of the movie in the toilet the policemen would be behind the mirrors and film the man in the toilet we had original material and we reenacted it with actors and so it's a question who is the pervert on this side like the one meeting in the toilet or the ones behind the mirror because man couldn't meet anywhere so they sat at the toilet people told us all these stories we started in Berlin in an archive for different memories they call it we talked to men who experienced things like that they were in concentration camp after the war the allies freed them and put them in jail again so this was for me like horror and this anger I felt we wanted to put in a movie I don't know if you have any questions otherwise I can continue no questions fine so other than what you were telling now the characters as you were saying they are based on divers stories I mean Hans or Victor they did not exist as such specific individuals but they would exist as characters so you kind of rebuilt and recreated these characters and I think it's interesting to know how you happened to know about these stories how did you start it off archive and they got us some people we could really talk about no one of the men is alive no one could see the movie because they were old last year Austria said sorry we made a mistake two years before Germany said okay we made a mistake but it took too long for those men to hear that it was not fair but we could talk to a few people and we melted together like three or four biographies to tell one story of incredible injustice you had to first you had testimonies like voice testimonies and live testimonies and then you searched for a story for the history in the archive yes we also went to gay bars and went to the places the old people in the corner asked them have you been to prison because you were gay and they would start crying so yes it was a secret for many of those men they wouldn't talk about it but when we came to ask them they started talking sometimes they had a partner and the partner he didn't know that the other one was in prison and he said well I was in prison too and both started crying it was very emotional and it was also they never lost a humor so we tried to put a little bit of this humor in the movie too yeah I think it's a bit difficult yes but yes we had some moments of laugh as well because if you lose your humor people told us you cannot survive because it's so so sarcastic the whole situation it's so perverted that you get into a prison because you love someone yes and as you said also who is the pervert in the history in the story in these stories get some question no yeah can you hear me? I have a question because I'm from history and I'm curious about the way in which you combine historical sources oral testimonies with the narrative of the film with the plot of the film and are there boundaries between the two or not we can create new type of narratives and trying to grasp appearances through another way of telling and accounting and I'm curious about that I think you can combine like nobody really knows how it feels except the one who lived it so we try to create an atmosphere that you can feel what it could be like so all the stories like communicate in prison with the little holes in the book or that they meet outside during the night these stories they are real but you never know it's a fiction movie so we don't know if it really looked like this if they were really like so you try to research a lot and after that we were very happy that people who experienced things like this they told us okay it wasn't exactly the same situation as you portrayed it but the feeling was the same so for us it was more important to transport the other feeling of a certain period of time so I think it's necessary not just to tell the stories but to tell the stories that someone listens to them so it's difficult sometimes but for a movie we try to do it this way yeah so I have another question because when using this kind of historical material to make a movie I have two questions I guess you have shown the movie around the different cities or different festivals so how is usually the general reaction I guess some people that have similar situation have watched the movie and how actually they reacted and also did you get any backlash or any kind of reaction from any kind of show because I'm thinking about other documentaries or movies that could be similar that kind of situations they criticized that you are portraying this from the present point of view or not so I'm just curious about that if you get any kind of criticism we got very good reactions we were even on many queer film festivals in the beginning we were very afraid because it's a huge history we want to portray it's like 25 years and it's not so easy to do we got bad response from countries that wouldn't want to show it like Turkey they don't want to show it and many other countries they don't want to touch homosexual issues and the story was that many like aunts from my family or people who never thought about homosexuals many came after the movie and said I was moved I could feel that this is real love of each other also so it was for a few like the beginning of conversation somehow so there we had really good feedback from countries that don't want to tell these stories and don't want to hear and we have the same problem as I said just one year ago not even one year ago my country said sorry we made a mistake but now everyone's dead so there's even western countries that have difficulties facing those injustices fine so I think that if there are no further questions oh you have a comment yes one last question if I may I think you said everything more or less about the process of the creation process of the film but I'm curious about the prison the jail where is it is it open is there a memorial or I don't know tell us a bit please it's an old German democratic it was a dictatorship prison and it was empty and we could do all what we wanted to do that's what the reason why we went to Germany in Austria we couldn't find an empty prison and it was really interesting there because there were so many stories the feeling was very intense and the whole team was locked together all the time and then there was corona and everyone would go home and we didn't know if we can finish the movie because they wanted to tear down the whole building and today it is a student home so they rebuilt the prison for students and really and it's just a very historical building we were happy to find and it was easier for us to shoot this historical movie in a prison because even today prisons look a lot the same so we had people from Iran in the audience and they said I just fled from Iran because I spent in such a prison under such conditions because I am gay so I'm so happy to be here now so it's not over it's in one out of three countries worldwide homosexuality is still under punishment so this seems something like we have overcome but it's not very safe it's not very secure and we have to work on that freedom each day to not lose it again thank you very much Thomas for your presence for the discussion for the movie and well because you also know the movie just so you know this film is available in filming the filming platform just a few weeks ago you can access through the filming platform there are also some screenings down and the cinema theater so please recommend it well now I think we will give you a break so not sure I don't think we have time for a break so we will be swapping the text at the east at this panel discussion and we will start off with the last panel discussion a more local base and I would like to call to the panelists to come to the front so good afternoon good evening we will now start the last panel of this discussion so good afternoon good evening so good afternoon good evening we will now start the panel of this day which is from the local to the global perspective lesbians in Catalonia I will be facilitating this panel and basically I will now introduce the panelists and I'm happy because we are all women so I will introduce them and their trajectories we've got to the left Marce Otero Vidal I agree and philosophy and philology here with a chair in Latin at this university she's also a feminist activist she's currently doing great work at Caladona and the feminist network and other feminist organizations like Boyotin Theoria and she's doing a great job in Catalonia also she's also a translator and literary editor and she's a member of the National Council HDTV Eye of Catalonia we also have Maria Pia she's a feminist activist as well she fights for the rights of women and lesbians bisexuals and trans she's a counselor spokeswoman of Catalonia left wing party at the Ortega Nardo district of Barcelona and then we have Maria Ziral to my left she's a historic activist she organized the first lesbian collective in Spain and she's a member of the Fronda Liberamen Gay de Catalonia the Gay Liberation Front of Catalonia she joined the feminist movement and she's a promoter of the lesbian networking Alcruz and Zenda and LGBT Lab where she's working currently at Gayles TV and she's also they also prepare the Aliquales report which is a manual report she's the vice president of the LGBTI chamber and director of the Pride Social Barcelona and the president of the family the organization family is a LGBTI an LGBTI dot cat and I will facilitating the panel asking questions to the panelist and facilitating these panel which will not be a set of presentations I will just ask to ask you to just take the floor and say a piece on account of the questions and then if there's anything else you want to say please do so the first question from me is what has been your path your trajectory as women with dissident sexualities just to set the environment the context starting point good evening I believe I should start because my age first of all I would like to thank the organization for the invitation and I would like to thank you for being here with us sharing this evening I was here at this university for 20 years from 1964 to 1984 and I never had anything about lesbians or gays or anything like that I mean I had some things but nothing like that I mean you don't want to know what was the environment of this university on those grey years of the dictatorship first time someone publicly spoke about lesbianism in this university and the law of social danger and so on was in the first sessions of women in 1966 last week of May and it was like the starting point of the feminist movement after the dictatorship that was in 1976 and we know there was feminism here before that we perfectly knew who were the women from Feminal Carmacal we've been keeping track of them it wasn't easy but we had the militias the women from 36 but when we got there we didn't really know about that because again no one would ever speak about that and I'm saying this because when they ask what's your background I should start saying that somehow my conscience and the awareness of feminine sexuality and its multiple manifestations up to 1976 we didn't really know anything so that's why I have always fought for sexual effective training in schools and everywhere so from that point on when these awareness started to raise and to appear you know today we they talk about intersectionality like women and lesbians well then feminist lesbians, lesbian feminist and we've kept on walking from there so that's just the starting point because I'm here I would also like to share a memory of the remembrance of all the colleagues male and female colleagues that have been here in any imaginable closet in this university I would like to see them here sitting here with us because we've gone through rough times and maybe now would be a nice time for celebrations imagine if you follow me I guess I should continue since I was 14 I've known I like women I didn't know about the word dissident but yes I guess I'm dissident since I was 14 and because I wanted to be normal I started studying psychology when I was 17 perfect hello yes so I started studying the psychology to understand what everything was about and by chance I might not be here otherwise and they were holding this presentation of the Gay Liberation Front of Catalonia that was the school of psychology when it was located next to the Catalonia football stadium the university campus it was crowded it was a huge crowd there and at the end of the presentation I went to the table and I asked whether they had women in the organization too but they said well they gave me this DNA for this sheet of paper you know with the text on it with 30 names and I started calling each one of them out of these 30 people I got in touch with 10 which is quite a high percentage out of those 10 of these 10 people actually these 10 women we met in Plaza Catalonia where the NUC store is now located and that's where the first lesbian collective started within a gay organization in this case it was Catalonia Liberation Front FAC so we held meetings for a year or so with divergences and so on and this agreement and we ended up with Greta Laman she was a radical feminist at that point the word radical had its original meaning which is going to the root unfortunately now Lidia Falcón has stolen the term I do not agree with that but anyways we would meet at Carre Riareta No. 8 in Barcelona and that's where everything started and all the way to the present day we're lucky for Tolora I am from a different generation but I was in the closet for a long time as well as a little girl I remember I had girlfriends because there were no labels for us so I would be with girls and boys and I thought it was bisexual but then when I grew older as a teenager I went back to the closet because of pressure and all the relationship I had afterwards where with men but they didn't really work something told me it wasn't working and I did not have any reference when I was in high school gay man lesbian woman I'm from 1993 I could look younger but anyway when I was 20 something I really got out of the closet I fell in love with my best friend after 15 years together and the truth is at home I've had a safe space but I could be myself and I know I'm fortunate because of that but it's not the same thing socially I have not had references and I couldn't talk with colleagues and friends about that but then at some point all of my friends we all came out of the closet and we all teamed up also as a teenager I started finding socialization spaces as a collective it's not very different but it's my experience anyway you can keep on speaking I can launch some questions now and then but what encouraged you to make you visible as lesbians make yourself seen well the thing is not that you make yourself seen but for others to see you to identify you as such even if you think that you just live your life and just go about your things without explicitly saying anything sometimes time because people are kind at least in some peer environment that's what it is about so about visibleization it just takes time and it's like over time you eventually become the big lesbian, the old lesbian that's kind of the title you get and then you know for women what's important it's the feeling of belonging to a group and finding help and support in your friends and your lovers and set up organizations because lesbianism is an experience there's a way of life it is a pleasure, it is a will but it is also a policy particularly at some points and moments you really need to go for that political option and that is where organizations for instance at Caladona when the feminist lesbian group came up with the magazine Trivadas or when the younger lesbians from the violet axis came up well from this discussion, this organizational shelter in which we were all side by side that's what encouraged us to make ourselves seen also with this this visualization which is always related to a political alternative that something else is possible that another world is possible in a different way of seeing things and about Greta Landman from the documentation center of Caladona we can't really believe how this woman got herself this very significant historic conscience and she would keep everything personal, impersonal everything she could like the napkins from the day she would go out for dinner and all of that is important today we're talking about history here and having this reference point in time is very significant because it's good to have reference points among spears at a certain point but also recognizing and acknowledging this genealogy and for young lesbians to know they are not the first ones they are the only ones and they have all this history all this precious documentation because it really explains a load of things for instance about this stage this period which is so challenged and questioned now which is the transition to democracy we had in this country so based on this kind of document what we feminist call and say that the private is public and it's political we can really dig out a great deal of things so that's the kind of visualization we have which is individual and collective is also joined and do you think that historical fund this file you have this archive do you think it is disseminated enough well it's based on voluntary work of course and it comes with a lot of work once you have the materials and the documentational sorted out in boxes that's quite a lot when everything is filed had this unfitting archive with the whole meaning of the word because everything was not fitted in boxes because this file this archive was not in order when compared to the tradition of notarial files and archives that put away all the wheels and contracts the files and archives of social movements are of a different character completely and some days ago it was the World Day of Archives and there's a lot of talk on the importance of archives and the importance of memory because people talk about identity and the memory and then everyone panics about Alzheimer's and it's all together the same package and we are really aware of the value of what we've got in those file cabinets at Caladona it's a true jewel but you really need to sort everything out we also know that things on paper will only last for so long so everything should be digitized and so on actually we are so much an institution here that we request money from the institutions to digitize our archive and I had to seize the opportunity well it is important because the history of the Alder TBI movement has been written by men very few people know for instance there was this character Mr. Nellina Verdi who was really important in Cornwall she was a lesbian she was a performer a singer also cross-dress and she was arrested because she was mistaken for a man and she said are you not going to do anything and that's where the riot started she actually punched the police officer as well but anyway that's when the whole thing started there they mentioned other people like Marcia and so on but Laverny she's got this lovely name but still she's often forgotten this is like the manifest we did from the lesbian collective it's never mentioned the manifest or the fact that the lesbian collective existed now there's starting to be some talk about it even our partners in the movement have not really underlined it because it was something just about women and I love them, I love my former colleagues at the original Catalonia Liberation Gay Liberation Front but you really need to express these things out you really need to say we've been here, we are here we've been here for a long time because our work is indispensable by the way the manifest Maria is talking about is the one that was read in the Niza theater in the fall of 1977 and we have it in our archive so no worries actually I came out of the closet thanks to politics and the fact of being able to generate safe spaces for me it was about finding out and discovering the associations and I felt empowered to come out of the closet and that's what I think too when I started digging into history nothing about bisexuals but also when I would look for lesbians I didn't find anything and it's even now difficult to find things and this is something we need to do from many places also for younger generations my sister for instance she's 20 and I'm saying this on a positive note many people on her classroom are lesbians or bisexuals they do not speak it out because it's normal for them but they know about this but they don't know about this whole history they don't really know about how hard the struggle was to get to the point to where they are and I believe that's important I also believe that references are important I'm here and I'm so happy to be surrounded by references such as you and thanks to the fact that I got into the world of associations I've had you as references struggling and fighting and raising awareness and I believe there should be many more I was talking about this with Barbara there should be many more women just raising up and speaking up and we need to go through this visualization process at the beginning you have to accept things yourself at first that was my process at least I had to accept myself not judging myself I didn't want to be pigeonboxed anyway it's not like you need to have this label like you have this social need to put a label on yourself because otherwise what are you going to tell people and in my case I really needed to say it out to express myself and to come out because I had many heterosexual relationships before that and also the gender expression we have not said this but for instance my partner she has this dike as you could say expression the way she the image she sells out but I don't and I believe there's not much talk about this about the gender expression and this could also have an impact on the actual women it's not like you're walking on the street and they call you a dike and you're not and we need to make that visible because women we are so diverse and the gender expression we send out doesn't have to be a label well in my case for instance I did come out of a thing with me and I said I'm sorry but I like women so that's the way that's how I came out of the closet but from that point on they started to talk to me as if I was a guy like about the floods and the dates and so on and it's like I don't really need to hear all of that but anyway and in my case I don't think they were surprised but it was kind of a defense mechanism but it wasn't unintentionally back to this sub alternate vision you were in the beginning of the race of gay and lesbian movements but why didn't you have why lesbians didn't have a more relevant role in the beginning well actually we were at the first real transversal like cross demonstration with gay people lesbian people trans people feminist students tried unionist neighbor association representatives everyone was there and people who would join us on the street 4,500 people which was allowed at that time so why did this happen well it was actually 10 of us versus 100 men women there were no cross dressers or trans and Gretel said he will come to us he will come to us because the struggle is the same because we're all homosexual you know she would give us that giggle and she would say he will come to us and we did eventually yes because there's some synergist some sexist patriarchal synergist here that flowed and keep on flowing unfortunately amongst our gay colleagues and it's like that we experience that in society as a whole experiences it and gay couldn't be any different and for instance the signs of Nazario which were beautiful but his signs you know the sign for the gay liberation front did not represent us because it was too phallocentric and they would say like you lesbians just half a small penis and some things like that because it was the Lacanian period when everyone would talk about Lacan and so on so at the end we just left she's laughing because she knows what she said that to me but it's okay because there's a family but anyway we left this organization this movement we believe that they never forgot it they never forgave us for that like for instance he would never he will never mention us he never does and that's why you have to say it but I really love them too anyway and so and I'm talking to Marseille here we lesbians found shelter in the feminist movement right well that's one of those issues you know the lesbophobia of the feminist movement and some colleagues here can talk about it better because they've worked on it and sometimes you don't even realize it's one of those feelings but it's true however that in order for the feminist movement to make progress or we needed to give a good face we couldn't tear things down it's like lesbians would think we'll discuss this later and this was always latent there in the background to this issue this feeling that in pro-abortion demonstrations all feminist lesbians would be there and instead when the calls the demonstrations were just for lesbians there were only the lesbians there so this is one of the feelings the feminist movement has self-analyzed from the inside somehow and well however the relationship has always existed we have never broken that down and the lesbians in the feminist have always had a place in the feminist movement and at least that's the way I like to think it's been of course it depends on the experience of everyone something that has been a little more difficult within the feminist movement also for feminists has been the intergenerational dialogue you know at some point you had this lesbian, young lesbians pushing forward and inside the group of feminist lesbians they prepared this document which was presented in the in Granada it was called this manifest was called the dress of the empress and they were already criticizing things the way things were and of course it's never easy but I think that now at this point we are quite content and grateful and all together just in case well much like here we know that there are some people that are drivers and facilitators and one of the most active groups is the known as Borges and Theoria which would be theoretical dykes kind of they say again dykes but theoretically dykes in theory and there are discussions on every Saturday morning and then we go over some things that we believe are very interesting where some of us read through let's say ancient texts where we read monique vitics texts for instance or lesbians whether they are women or not so these type of topics and some readings that are really powerful until you reach the present performance we go over this so whenever they call for these the day of pride and well I think that being a feminist lesbian is something that you can really be proud of yes I am yeah a week ago I was re-reading some manuscripts by Greta and they were so updated indeed they were so modern I mean you could research that because she was looking at the way that other feminist groups were using the terms and from psychology from the mastery of language I would say that I was really something very updated yeah what Maria is saying by Greta is something that we really need to be well aware of women whether we're lesbians or not in not trying to become a subject of research or the object of research we want to be a subject because some topics become fashionable and often since they have not very very much researched then at the university level or whatever level like it's like labor and women or healthcare and women so you get my point and this is something that Greta already perceived it's not like we lesbians can only talk about lesbianism it's not reaching that extreme but we need to be aware in that it's not like you shall not name a god in vain lesbianism in vain yes it's true when they say like healthcare and women or medicines and women so meaning that medicine was in the hands of men back then so language terminology is really perverted and that was something that Greta really mastered along these lines what how do you think that we should relate or should establish links with other struggles for instance against racism or the struggle for care the struggle for housing but might be the role of lesbian women in this kind of struggles well at first when we said that back in the demonstration in 1977 everyone came there was talk by Omnium Association on these shared struggles well why not having these all in once more but then this brings to my mind that famous intersectionality but that seems to be the last lesson because first we were going through cross sectionality now we're talking about intersectionality the problem is that often these are just terms in that we are so fed up or being told about these intersectionality cross-culturality or interculturality but at the end of the day how are we making things happen what are we doing and let me add another topic here I'm seeing to some concern in my view and how in the academia or in the university in such a setting where we are now there is a line of discontinuity between the queer movement and the LGBT movement let me explain myself as if the queer movement has just appeared even though it was like 20-30 years ago and these contrasting opposing the work being done from the LGBTI movement it's seen as something opposed as something which is discontinuous and I would think that this is dangerous even more so when stemming from the academia gender studies LGBTI studies in Barcelona have taken place since 1993 where the first comparison studies started in 1993 at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and then some years later here at the University of Barcelona but there is this discussion which is not a discussion brother it's more like a confrontation I would say it's dangerous in that when this pours out into the society people read it the way they do and they end up by having this reductionism approach and finding young people that identify themselves as queer I mean that's great because we are all queer we are all dissident no matter our age but they are against the pride they and so I mean I'm the director of the pride now maybe I will not be in some years time but again I'm a be I think it's a bit of a pity to see these and I think that this shows some lack of accountability by the academia in conveying this sense of duality to the society as if there were some bad guys and good guys but what we are seeing now in Catalonia in Spain most of what we now have has been through the role of the trans gay families, lesbians and it's after their struggle to make these laws possible so to tear these down well maybe we should start thinking what we are doing in the academia in the university but later we see how some political parties and some left wing parties even or ruling parties that look at the queer part this younger part and they promote it in a way as if to have a negative impact on the usual LGBTI movements because they just plain naked out in the wild and no one's daring saying what I'm saying out here but anyway maybe because I have my age but I think we need to make this clear and I'm sure that this is turning all good faith and no doubts on that but we should read Judith Butler some more she's a wise person she's telling us that in the times we are where this is related to on our planet on the water on the forest then what are we to do with the seas? Solidarity Judith Butler says that we have to be caring we have to be supportive it doesn't mean that we need to love to one another or lay in bed to one another but we need to know where our enemy is and that's very simple to understand and the enemy is not amongst us is outside so anyway without taking up more time just wanted to make this point well on that from a different generation I think that we should try to run away from that often and I can tell you because I'm very much into social media and then all of a sudden you see this new naming new labeling and sometimes these detracts from the movement I mean I've been in training in these communities and people say why labeling yourselves and then you go into this naming thing and this labeling part and maybe what you are now talking about because I mean as a teenager myself I did not know about the history of the LGBTQ movement and sure there are some young people that are very much attracted to it that maybe too much and maybe they have this lack of sense of belonging and maybe this eventually is sort of a fad to them but it's also in my view because they are lacking the true awareness on what's been done and they would like to believe in a utopia where you need no labeling where you need no tagging not saying that that might not be the future but maybe now it is not so but maybe we should start by reading Judith Butler and discussing all amongst us and we need to do that because I don't think it's just a fashion I don't think it's just a fad or I think it's more like a natural evolution in the movement back in 77 where we were together but things are changing now and bringing in new acronyms, new letters and we have the intersex they didn't want to be there but here we have them so anyway it's non binarism it's here that we have non binary people Judith Butler herself she claims to be non binary but that was something that was not here 20 years ago well now you can be non binary I don't think it's just a fad as such but maybe trends the issue is on if you can see in the social media and I would say mostly in Twitter don't know what happens with people on Twitter they go crazy and they can ruin your life if you say something like we have expressed here just a fraction of it you would be brought to the gallows and by the by an angry mob so people refrain from stating their views in a society where we this is a free society not like in Franco's regime but now we are more coerced than ever we don't seem to reflect on things we take many things for granted and people just follow their some motives so you are a left-minded person you need to work for true democracy and they can only be provided by education by training I think it's crucial and it's very important because otherwise the rest just wouldn't work let me go back to because I know you kind of digress onto many topics but let me ask you a thing and this is a question for the three of you if any which have been the major claims by lesbian well one of the major claims one of the major things that have been indicated is the ownership of our own body and that's what they say the agenda and that would be like one thing would be the same sex marriage and that was one of the milestones and we and the group of feminist lesbians we believe that marriage were still in patriarchy another milestone like we lesbians should have children should have the possibility of having children that was another milestone and lesbians to be able to have their children with family names of both mothers so there have been some stepping stones some milestones that were clear in the agendas but again these are just the tips of the iceberg and then you have what's beneath the surface and again as Maria was saying like how are we to approach education how are we to approach coeducation what are we to do if there is no sexual effective education at schools what if you still face this sexist kind of bullying so one thing are the claims that can be put in the agenda sort of and then a different thing would be that we will always be lacking some more there is some room to go and we need this proper recognition of of history when Maria was talking about clear for instance when they come to research one ass and they come to look for queer material and we say we don't have queer material because back in the 70s or 80s we had none and so they look at the documents or the materials of the 70s and 80s and they say well this is queer because when you were saying this that's something that stuck in my mind what attack is what a label is and what a reality is yes because in the united states for instance I mean like queer we are all queer in that we are all outcasts we are all different yeah sorry I went back in time and Cathy's question was different but then I'm slow minded so I had this stuck in my mind on what Cathy was asking I think that this invisibility of lesbian women is just a myth just a legend because we can be found everywhere I mean really everywhere we are at the cashiers desk at the supermarket we are teachers and last week a document a festival done on every 5 years in castle the most prestigious art show and the group in charge of all the documents is a group of 5 lesbian women in the past country they do not well people do not know that they are lesbians I mean they are seen as a role model but here you have them or teachers there are many teachers who are lesbians so we are everywhere but then we have not made ourselves so visible in the LGBTQ movement because we have these dual as ceiling as lesbians and as women then we seem to sit down the cracks and that is where you can find us so you are saying that we are facing these dual ceiling as lesbian women even though you were at the front at the gay liberation front it was more difficult to you as lesbian women but not just something that they men would understand because they wanted to promote that back then and we had to kind of uh tell them and doing these work in a more silent way yes indeed and many lesbian women that would not dare saying they were so they found in feminism the right the ideal showcase to be there without expressing themselves as lesbian but rather as feminist to prevent these dual stigma yes yes well in my generation one of the things there is much talk about are the methods men seem to have quite much and we don't have that much and we are also not that much protected against STDs it's not like a condom and this is a topic that's not being much discussed and whenever we have sexual relationships among women we have very many doubts and for the younger people I think that this is something that should be promoted and researched and furthermore is really expensive I'm saying so because now and the pride under the Moto Boyo Mami the Mami Dyke so we've had to buy some of these which are really expensive methods and I'm not sure how much a condom is I don't have any idea but I think that ours are like four times more expensive and so and they are unknown to many in like if you do not know how you can protect yourself and you do not know how to use it how to employ it yeah many people find it hard to understand lesbian women if there is no penis it's like there is no sex no sexuality which is not true because when a woman tries being with another woman there is no coming back someone had to say it so if there is no sexuality less STDs it's that latex thing but it's really expensive I mean or even for menstruation for the men's we are having these many issues when talking about the price of not just antiseptic but all tampons for instance we're also facing this issue in that we don't have the true justice on taxes now but should we talk about these or about lesbians maybe we are digressing a bit too much well I have a trend in me so do you think that we now are occupying a more prominent position in like there are some lesbian groups which one have stood the test of time which ones have remained well I was a member of an organization the observatory against homophobia I'm no longer a member but I was looking for a place where I could socialize and to stand for rights but there were no women there and so I think that we still find it hard to find a spot within the collective and in many areas we find it hard we find it hard to empower ourselves to really own it we are vice presidents rather than presidents and we find it hard to find these to be a true part and now I'm at Bordes in Teoria this association and I'm more into it because I but at first I was looking for an LGBT organization and it was really difficult for me and I then to Lesbicat got no answer from them and eventually I end up at the observatory against homophobia but we seem to be lacking networking, socializing spaces well maybe these are spaces that we should be creating rather than trying and find them where when they already have a really laid out sexist structure in that and then they are colleagues in these organizations but the truth is that like the pride for instance when all organizations are there the LGBT well you find Kathy as the president of the LGBT families but then since 80% 80% are members so it has to be a woman and then vice president has to be a man and then Anna Valenzuela from Chrysalis so I think that we have told them this year is to have women lesbian women in the in these associations and they should be the ones that come up to the stage in the future years because it's a clear picture it's men all around and just a single woman and then myself on these spaces for lesbian women now since since we have Maria Girol here we have not mentioned Daniels because when you look back in history you also need to go through these short stories that are more powerful than one might think yes Daniels was a pub in Saint-Germas district it was a lesbian pub and I was great Amparo she was a patron there and I was for 10 months working every day it was open 7 days a week and it was great we should still was there because it was really difficult to believe you would find your housewives the early hours in the morning or the students with their uniforms and then late at night you would get the actresses I cannot give you names here because some of them are still alive but the people from Helmolino Music Hall you would find models it was like your usual British pub and then you would have Daniela organizing performances and basketball matches and then I was on the music and there was a red light as the warning sign so that you would see that in the dance floor so that people would stop dancing in the event of a police raid it was quite an experience when talking about spaces and places that we should be one must think that there have been some precedents so then you would have Rosa as well Patmos anyway that's an old women's story but anyway these are places that have existed and later someone will have to write about them but that was what the underground movement had it has these attractiveness this sexy aspect of what's being forbidden and it was like people from all over Catalonia and even from abroad coming it was always crowded there was a smokey pub and many stories tucked in there it was like a family wasn't it Emperor since we are in a place of history it was good to look at these milestones to these feats and I think it's worth remembering because the thing is activism and then a different thing would be all these spaces for sharing for leisureing, for entertaining, for well-being and I think that it's an important thing very many we need to reinvent ourselves again and again some years ago in 2013 for four years along with some of my friends and partners we organized some lesbian cruisers in the Mediterranean and people from Peru would come some couples from Peru would come for this cruiser and just to be there it was amazing so new ways of organizing ourselves maybe what's already here is no longer useful we have to do that on our own we shouldn't be sitting back and waiting for someone else to do that for us yes and I agree with what you're saying that it's up to us no one else will do it for us and to conclude before we open the floor for questions maybe you can tell us if there is some self-criticism that can be thrown on the job done by lesbian women since 1977 when we were in this house at the time of the Great Destinity you demanded the solution it's like the self-criticism it's better to request a solution and we've done things right things wrong but we've tried that for sure and that's really important having tried and of course today I see here people from the institutions we need to bear in mind that there's a number of laws we know the limits of laws and that's what we've been discussing about glass ceilings and so on but of course thank God we've got the laws they could be better yes definitely because some of them were rushed at the end of a mandate because we didn't know if we would be able to do it in the next power cycle but we've done that at least they're done and to the extent we are women that are aware and responsible we assume responsibilities well of course full on self-criticism we need self-criticism we need to criticize ourselves and the movement as a whole ways we relate to each other the way we organize ourselves we need to work together that doesn't mean we need to sleep together but we need to go in the same direction self-criticism for lesbians as well means not wanting to be in the spotlight also maybe because we women we don't like to speak in public but I have to do it because I have a moral obligation doing it and so this relaxation this let someone else speak let them speak the men well this visibility we were talking about this lack of visibility is sometimes on us and no one else but us so we need to empower ourselves because we are powerful we are lesbians we know what the word means we are Amazon I'm sorry but we are continuously fighting we fought since we were little not so little some of us but normally since we were little and we've gone against everything in society this is why we are self-made we are free people because we never had to depend financially on a husband of course I'm generalizing here but this power we need to be able to convey to occupy the space public space mainly because we have private spaces but we also want public spaces and we need to take them up but in terms of self-criticism I would say we must not forget we need always remember things how hard it was to get to this point and we can lose it all overnight with the far right the way it is and sometimes it's difficult to be aware of that and also sorority it's what you said Maria we need to understand what sorority means and sometimes if we don't do things together then others will go ahead of us and of course I like to say that history has made us invisible and we have to rewrite history so that we are seen in history and that would be also the criticism from a generational point of view and also to reinforce what I just said there's no difference between the LGBTI movement and the queer movement they're all one in the same we compliment each other and queer theory reinforces everything around LGBTI so there's no gap between one thing and the other as sometimes once some people want to understand from the academia so we shouldn't divide there's this trend this tendency to divide to split up also with political interest behind sometimes but no we are together on these issues and others we are together and we stand together we need to work together ok so we will now move on to the Q&A session if anyone wants to raise a question well thank you all of you for your words and well now about the celebration of the pride Barcelona recently found out and I'm just speaking from memory but I found out I discovered the Boston marriages I didn't know about, Wesley marriages this was an institution which was completely accepted in the north of the United States by which two women could live in a marriage for financial purposes and this was accepted for women to live in this sexual effective relationship I also read the words of García de Odez on the topic he had two hypothesis one that there was more tolerance towards these things at that point and that disappeared in the beginning of the 20th century the second one is that no one would think that two women who lived together could have a different purpose than a financial one because women did not have any sexual desire so I would like to know what's the role in your memory in your genealogy of this institution of the Boston marriages and also sometimes we should go back to 1889 when James Adams and the 18th start opened this community of women where women were living in marriages in Boston and this was accepted also in Chicago and the whole area so I know this is a specific question but I would like to know if you have this part of the genealogy also integrated as a way of living in freedom well we should go back to Safas she was the most prominent female poet ever but because she was a lesbian she has been left aside but she was as important as Homer but yes there's been the Boston marriages and there's always been ways of sneaking through the cracks and there's been many Catalan female writers who were lesbians and they've been living with their assistants or whatever this has existed forever there's no origin I mean it's not the 18th century or the 19th century it has existed always the history of Alistair in Victorian England she also was able to live with her partner and if we were to go and find the origins we would have to date to go really back in time from a historic perspective when you look for a genealogy we're not the first we're not the only ones you go back to the beginning of time if you go back in time and that's what also provides us with this empowerment this whole genealogy we have on our backs and if they made it we will make it as well and there are cases which are really moving also in a literary way because what we keep what has prevailed this literature and we've not discussed this but the role of lesbians in literature to break down stereotypes that would be a whole other topic but yes I like your point yes hello I would basically want to confirm what Maria said at this point and also related to what you said about the movement there's been a part of the movement that did not feel related to the legal acknowledgments there has been so we were socially excluded in the movement you could be wealthy or poor woman, a lesbian, a gay man whatever but when you could be acknowledged in a marriage and also your properties and your condition would not influence, would not impact in your life then you had the option of going against the system in the past you had to go against the system wanted or not but I believe that a part of the movement is now missing that they have not assumed it and they have not accepted it so these kinds of contradictions which are very dynamic in the collective we really need to be alert and we need to be united and different and that's really hard to do and also we need to avoid fifth columns and this is nothing new but for 10 years at a European level I remember the pin for twin there's a phenomenon that was in the Netherlands in which lesbian and gay organizations were confronted with the Islamic movement to looking for a division for a divide Stonewall would have never existed without the feminist movement so these links these relations are our power our strength and we need to prevent this fifth column this division that instilled inside of the movement and that's difficult for to understand for many people but it really is a life or death issue for us and you know union indifference is what makes us strong and I give you a reference here Jordy Patin good evening I would just like to thank you for everything you you've taught us you know lesbians from Guadelan man Beneda and also the practice we had with the gay lesbian coordinator with the lesbians movement who told us we want to hold parties but on our own just ask lesbians and why because if in school anyone starts to bully us we will feel uncomfortable and like it or not you take the initiative you decide you turn on the light you turn on the light you play that music or the other so mixed work with gay men in activism has taught us many things we might have not learned outside of the activism world I was actually surprised from what happens in Scandinavian countries in Norway Denmark Sweden they have mixed associations and once a year women have this assembly on their own assembly aside they decide a number of things and then they go on with mixed work I know from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean that's quite a stretch but I believe that mixed work is to learn great many things to men as gay men and as men because we received sexist education of course probably in the Scandinavian countries they come from a different culture and probably here male sexism was more powerful that's maybe the explanation but we should analyze it thank you because you are a very prominent person in this world and thank you also for being with us here today well I think lesbians have always been kind of a hinge between the LGBTI movement and the feminist movement and as a hinge sometimes we've lost track of being lesbians I don't know what you think about this but Maria when you were talking about menstrual cups we have this tendency to discuss anything about ourselves and we have this tendency to fight within the LGBTIQ movement and the feminist movement and on this dual facet in which we feel comfortable and we work very well it's really hard for us to talk about ourselves to focus the topic on ourselves and to really talk from ourselves so I believe this is probably the main task lesbians should focus on without losing sight or without stopping the activism in the feminist movement or the LGBTIQ movement but we need some inner work from the outside to the inside and the other we want as lesbians I would like to know whether you've got any strategy when you are in some place and you see that you start to digress because we have this ability any strategy to refocus we are working on that strategy indeed I love that you said this I thought this idea would not come up but I've always had this feeling that as lesbians we are always working for others and it's like when it's going to be our turn and this is why we wanted to do this work but again that's work in progress yes we like mothers right we're always taking care of someone ok so we'll take a round of questions now and then you can answer them all together to close up well first of all I would like to congratulate you on this conference and this session because I believe what you do is really useful today and I would like to highlight a couple of things first of all talk of references reference people in this country not just at the level of the media but also its person who is a part of the who is a part of the lttbi movement could be a role model for the friends, for the peers when publishing a paper or a story on the newspaper we need to break that barrier also the second thing would be the difficulty to find spaces, to find places for the lttbi collective so as I said the lack of spaces to find people there's many meeting spaces for heterosexuals but not so much for lttbi members of the lttbi community at least from my experience and then there was one last point which I forgot visibility visibility in the media there's a lot of talk on aggressions suffered by gays or lesbians on the beach on the street but I believe that not enough work is done in this regard and of course I could answer this but it would be biased, I would like to ask you what can anyone do like me or any of us to better disseminate and raise awareness on the lttbi community thank you I'm sorry to speak again but I would just like to highlight something which is the most transgressive part of the lttbi community to lesbians and this would be lesbian motherhood you know motherhood between two women I believe that really up ends the whole patriarchal sexist system and I believe that's a huge contribution to make visible diversity lesbian motherhood is a great contribution which came when you could make it possible and I believe this is the avant-garde of the movement single parent families and particularly lesbian mothers yes linking it to the places for socialization and parting and pleasure have you found in cities freedom space or you could have to you had to look elsewhere because it just was you stop by gay men well you now started asking about spaces like party places I mean we not like a guide here a book I don't really know what the best party places are lesbians anyway as we as lesbians and this is the motive for the panel we found places all together amongst friends it's difficult but we are ordinary people and like anyone you always look for the spaces that are more akin to you also someone was talking about spaces and small towns and so on you know about these women for instance they bought this house in the Madesma region and they went to live by the seas in their old age some others do different things like they live in a commune they used to do that when they were younger and now maybe they do it again because if they had to go to nursing home well that's not a place where they feel comfortable because maybe they're not so old well just linking this last question to the comment by Jordi but lesbians want to have children want to be mothers and share it or not with the lesbian partners they find they do not fit in the heterosexual world or in the lesbian environment they were enjoying before having kids if their friends do not have kids so they come to organizations such as ours to find spaces where they can be relaxed amongst lesbians with children so we basically look for this support that's what we've always done so if you're younger you go to the members or if you are older and you can have children try and find other spaces you go to Sparks with your lesbian mother friends and another topic we lesbians love traveling you know you can go it's like when you travel across the world and you find another catalan well you travel across the world and you find other lesbians too why because we love traveling knowing about other cultures I mean you didn't find this you go to across the world and you find a catalan well same thing we are everywhere and you know lesbians like to travel it's like we like to be like Thelma and Louis but without the ending, different ending we don't really know the ending of the movie right but anyway we like to travel and travel differently and we can invent different things we can be creative we need to you know like exchange houses in Australia or Portugal or the state exchanging houses whatever, why not ok then our further questions we will just close this panel thank you so much for being here hopefully we will be able to you know meet up again in the future hopefully every year, thank you so much good afternoon everyone good afternoon everyone thank you for being here on this closing session of the conference and thank you for your what it means on the commitment and on the topic that you have discussed just a couple of minutes because every now and then at the university we have sort of let's say secular justice we face these odd times of secular justice and I say odd times because yet we need to value them highly when I was going through the contents of this conference and I was being told about this you need to know the Catalan minister who used to be the commissioner rector that was appointed by the government of course a government that I would say was not very much willing to accept the kind of conferences we have had today that led to proposition a statement by the rector where he was proposing that certain behaviors were not just being able to be prosecuted to being dismissed at full from the university with no file meaning that that's quite the very limit of what the human mind can entail so again this is a sort of secular justice because when talking about these topics here at the chapel now lo and behold because right behind this curtain there's a chapel the non consecrated part of the chapel by the way and a site a building where not that long ago there was the consecrated in the post provided by the Catholic religion and this is not an easy world where a difference is perceived as a problem or diversity is seen as a nuisance or I was hearing how some of the panelists were talking about doing away with a cast and breaking molds and claiming and standing for these is seen by many as an impediment thinking behaving differently is still a reason for yourself to justify yourself to excuse yourself as if life would need an excuse any justification so that unfortunately these type of conferences are still very much needed and even if only to be against that rector rector Carreras as he was known we will keep on doing as we have done for long committing to spelling out the truth and leaving our gates open to whoever with us are willing to speak out the truth as well because that's the only way to move forward to move away from mediocrity and banality so thank you thank you once more for being here thank you for being the whole day with us and this is your house the house of us all and this is the ideal place again a place to speak out the truth always and yet it's the vice rectors and the director of the foundation have heard me far too much so it's up to the Catalan minister we should be listening to her because I think it goes to show something that here in the Catalan government we have this type of ministry we have this support and it means something so on behalf of the University of Barcelona thank you very much for being with us and we are deeply privileged to have you here with us thank you very much rector good afternoon or close to good evening and congratulations from to the organizers of this conference on memory and specifically the Solidarity Foundation at the University of Barcelona and the European Observatory of Memories we can talk about many topics we know at the Catalan ministry that memory is a political event is a political action be it on research also on public policies and on all matters that can be worked on social movements and when we talk about a political action from memory one can identify several areas a clear one would be recognition recognizing a struggle for some rights here the LGBTQ rights which have never been taken for granted and but rather they have been conquered with decades of mobilization in recent times but a rebelliousness and a dissident which is way more historical a struggle to promote the rights of the LGBTQ community but all in all a struggle for the rights of the human people so any development makes us a more democratic society and this is a struggle for us to be granting rights but also for LGBTQ policies to be at the core so they are not just an addendum in any type of policymaking but all the elements of discrimination and lack of quality that we are faced are being taken into consideration and this highlights the value that we are having this ministry but also we need to recognize the mobilization of the LGBTQ community the feminist community and also the anti-racist movement probably this type of ministry would not be existing without these social movements so this is something to recognize but this is also an act for reparation in remembering all the clear violations of rights some more brutal than others as the ones faced under faces and totalitarian regimes in the 20th century but that clearly show what this type of regimes can still do we have many all around the world and the LGBT people are still being prosecuted and even in some apparently democratic countries you have no full entitlement of rights for them and something that's been discussed in the latest panel discussion on the visibilization within this community and particularly in the case of women and in the case of trans women because when we look back into the years of the end of Franco's regime but then Stonewall in 68 but then it was like a decade where queer people and the LGBTQ community had been confronting the police and at Stonewall you had trans women, sex workers and unless we remember all these the last element in memory will be harder to incorporate and that is how are we using it to work for the present and for the future a present that is still under threat by the far right in countries where one would think that this would no longer be a threat not because it had gone completely away this is something that has been kept but the role that's been seen in the media by the far right was not projected some years ago and the far right indeed they made no distinction whether you are feminist, a lesbian, a queer researcher no it's all in the same bucket to them so we try to understand and to make it clear that this is a shared struggle and this is a lesson from the past that we can really apply for the present times for our marginalization and the way we do our policymaking in also to prevent violations of rights and to further promote against LGBT for because this is still a thing we are experiencing these days in different representations in different areas in the labour environment in the educational environment in our communities and just recently trans people and trans women have been beaten the object of many hatred but not just from the far right but the so called feminist and feminist women and it would seem obvious that we should have the more people in and the main threat to women is still patriarchy and not trans women anyway this lesson that seems so clear to the far right the right as well maybe they are slightly subtler but the far right is something to have it clear so it should be clear to us as well and so since we are at the university developing moving forward on public policies in all areas better to have the laws rather than not to and she has been crucial and she has participated she has been a strong proponent of many of these catalan laws and we at the catalan ministry what we try to do is for the laws on equality are something to be truly enforced which means rolling them out in all areas and universities well there are some duties that can relate to the memory recognizing the contribution of the LGBTQ community into the curricula recognizing the contribution of them and this can be practically seen because institutional discrimination the one brought by the very public administration or administrations or an LGBTQ on the healthcare environment in the occasional environment if the universities are not incorporating this type of education this type of learnings and lessons from the past we cannot do away with these other than just safe spaces and working protocols but more than anything we need proper teaching incorporating the gender perspective the LGBTQ perspective the anti-racist perspective so that we have a proper critical critical thinker as citizen and incorporating all these matters and subjects so once more thank you for this space for memories as a way for recognition as a way for reparation and as a mirror to reflect upon the past and present and the future