Trini Falcés (A Coruña, 1942-2022) was, above all, “a great fighter, a survivor.” From the moment he was born, as a stolen baby, until his death. A vital adventure that forced her to move, “expelled”, from Galicia to Andalusia, from Aragon to Barcelona and even into exile in Paris. In between, he spent five years in the Franco regime’s prisons for homosexuals, those that distinguished between active and passive. In June 1977 he was at the head of the first demonstration of the State collective, in Barcelona. When the grays appeared, it was the transsexuals and prostitutes who took the lead. She was both. They were not afraid because, they said, “we are already dead”… but also because the police were old acquaintances. After so many forced moves, La Trini’s life fit in a closet, like the one now shown in the exhibition that pays tribute to her in her hometown, the one where she spent her last years again and where, finally, she felt treated. as he always wanted: as a person.
Beyond the demonstration that turned her into a symbol—and of which there is graphic testimony—and other similar milestones, it is not easy to reconstruct Falcés’s life. That was the challenge faced by Sergio Marey, curator of the exhibition. Remembrance of Trini (Remembering Trini), promoted by the Coruña Deputation, and also author of his biography, É mellor loitar que morrer de fame (It is better to fight than to die of hunger). “It is not a typical biography, it is not narrated chronologically.” But not because of a matter of style: “Trini was already very old and mixed concepts and ideas.” Therefore, in the parts of the book that are based only on his memory “there is no continuity, we do not know when one thing begins and another ends; “It’s all very diffuse.” Just as befits a myth.
The doubts begin even before Trini’s birth. She says that her biological mother was a native of Ferrol and that she worked in the San Agustín market in Coruña, where the man who would end up being her father – it is not known if after a rape – took her to serve in his house. From her story it is not clear if that is the reason why she was stolen or if it was because her biological mother and her adoptive mother gave birth at the same time, the second’s baby was stillborn and she stayed with her. The role of his adoptive father, an agent of Franco’s secret police, would have made things easier. Even so, to avoid confronting his mother, he gets a change of destination and they move to Andalusia. Here begins Trini’s pilgrimage.
Zaragoza would be the next destination. When her breasts began to appear “naturally”—“she was an intersex person,” Marey recalls—the family decided to move on and settle in her mother’s house, in Fuentes de Jiloca. But the time came for her to do her military service and, “so as not to talk about her tendencies,” they sent her to Barcelona. There he will spend three decades, a stay interrupted by an exile in Paris, about which almost nothing is known, and by his stays in prison.
The Franco regime created two different concentration camps for homosexuals: that of Badajoz – for the passive ones – and that of Huelva, intended for the active ones. “A delusional thing, as if they were two sexes,” says Marey, who recalls that, for the regime, “the active ones had more capacity to return to normal, because they were not becoming feminized like the passive ones.” Trini would go through both, suffering the rotten food rations, beatings or forced labor that were the order of the day. He spent five years in and out, until the Social Dangerous Law—the evolution of the Vagrants and Criminals Law—was repealed and sexual orientation was no longer a crime.
“We were already dead”
The demonstration of June 24, 1977, the first mobilization of homosexuals in the State, caught Trini already “very involved” in the social and political movements of Barcelona. She was a friend of the cartoonist Nazario and the painter Ocaña, two of the movement’s great activists, and she was related to the Front d’Alliberament Gai de Catalunya (FAGC), which was the one who called that march.
The human tide was traveling along the Ramblas, heading towards Canaletas, when the grays appeared, with batons and rubber balls. The attendees begin to disperse and that is when—as the photos show—“the trans women and prostitutes took the lead in the march because, as they said, ‘we were already dead.’”
Marey’s story — born 20 years after that founding milestone — coincides with the memory that Empar Pineda, a lesbian feminist activist and, at that time, leader of the Communist Movement, left elDiario.es on the fortieth anniversary of that historic protest. “The presence of the grays towards the middle of Las Ramblas made people begin to disperse, and those who acted as a shield and protected us were transsexuals and transvestites, whom we had not allowed to occupy the head of the demonstration because we were worried about the image ”.
Fito Ferreiro, member of the Palestra Association and one of the people who accompanied Trini most closely in her last years in A Coruña, adds with some humor a nuance that he recently learned about. “The homosexual movement was with the Barcelona bourgeoisie and, in the end, the trans people joined, something they didn’t like very much, because they didn’t want to mix.” However, it was precisely the presence of this group that meant that the grays were not used in depth. “In the end, between the police and the nightlife, everyone knew each other.” Their relationship was based on arrests, but also on “favors” they did for each other. “The agents recognized them and stayed there.”
“You are treating her like a lady.”
Fittingly, Ferreiro met a newly arrived Trini at a Pride rally in A Coruña, a decade before her death. After Barcelona and Paris, she had tried to return to the family home in Fuentes de Jiloca, but it was almost in ruins, so she decided to return to her birthplace. At first, he has no idea who his new friend is. He discovers it when, with the treatment, he begins to let go. “She really wanted to tell.”
Ferreiro remembers a conversation with Carla Antonelli – the first trans representative and current senator – to whom he expressed his surprise that Trini “loved them so much.” “It’s because you are treating her like a lady,” she replied. “They are women who were the spoils of society: transsexuals, who did not have their space, dedicated to the night, both to entertainment and to prostitution. Trini had a very complicated life. Those of us who were around her treated her like a person and she valued it a lot.”
In Barcelona, Trini worked for years as a cleaner in a hotel owned by the Pujol family, until the use of chemicals caused her to become chronically ill. When she goes to take the leave she discovers that, in all that time, the Pujols had not contributed for her. Since her salary was not enough, she had begun to prostitute herself occasionally, but from that moment on she began to do it “full time.” At the same time, he did performances in nightclubs. Marey says that she had several numbers: in one, she danced wrapped in a manila shawl; in another, with a stele. There are no photographs of any of them. Nazario told Ferreiro that in recent times, when she was already well into her sixties, Trini was in charge of bringing sandwiches to the girls on the street and keeping the fire lit in the drums they used to keep warm. “That’s how money was made.”
Shortly after arriving in Coruña, Trini begins to have hip problems. A group of people, headed by Ferreiro and the writer Eva Mejuto, help her in her daily life and keep her company. There they test their survival skills. “He knew all the tricks and he looked for life no matter what.” The entry into force of the Historical Memory Law had allowed her to receive compensation for her time in the concentration camps, but she lived on a non-contributory pension, “like almost three out of every four LGTBIQ+ people over 65.”
“He went to the food bank for food, to the parish for blankets, to social services to bring him food, pay for his glasses, Motorbike”. The Motorcycle was what Trini called her wheelchair. Since I lived very close to the Paseo Marítimo, when the weather was good I used it to get to the area of the beach where the lifeguards were. “That’s how they helped her go down to the sand to sunbathe.”
“What we keep”
A month before his death, Ferreiro took Trini to the Ribadumia Pride, in Pontevedra. “It was very nice, people gave him a lot of love.” He especially remembers how he connected with a 16-year-old trans teenager, to whom he gave the earrings he was wearing. “She was like that, she gave away everything she had. You went to her house and came back with necklaces, rings… all trinkets. When he died, I had to go pick up his things at the residence. Seeing them at home, I wondered what I was going to do with all that. It was there, talking with Sergio, when it came up to tell Trini’s story from her closet.”
“The closet represents what we keep, what we accumulate,” says Marey. “In the end, what Trini kept is what was in it: clothes, a box with documents and photographs… but little else. He had to move so many times that he didn’t have any big belongings.” The wardrobe in the exhibition is not Trini’s, but rather a second-hand one bought for the occasion. The visitor will be able to surround him and see different parts of his life: the photo at the Barcelona demonstration, an interview “when she was a prostitute, demanding that they not be expelled from the Camp Nou during the Barcelona Olympics”, the only image that is preserved of his artistic shows, others donated by Nazario… Also the coat he wore when he was out on the streets or the suit he wore in tribute to him. The commissioner adds to the list a letter that she considers “very special” in which Trini narrated her life “to ask the Justice of Aragon to dignify her as a person and give her help to be able to live in her town.” It had no effect, but Marey thought he showed “a lot of courage” by demanding something like that.
The exhibition, which will remain for a week in the Municipal Library of A Coruña before traveling to other municipalities in the province, not only seeks to pay tribute to Trini, but to all the people who fought for the rights of the group “not so long ago.” “To show how LGTBI people and especially trans people lived 50 years ago, because if we do not remember our past it will be very difficult for us to build our future well,” says Ferreiro. “Today we are here thanks to the struggle of those people, who called the first demonstration in Barcelona, who confronted the police, who were in jail… Thanks to them today we have the rights we have and we must remember all the suffering that it cost.”
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