For decades, Franco persecuted, harassed and attempts to repress any dissent. Also sexual and gender. Homosexuals, bisexual and transsexuals were public enemies, and lived police and state repression, many of them had to flee from their homes and their villages. In the case of the trans community, many of those who dared to tell it and live it resorted to prostitution as a way to win a salary, since no one was going to hire them.
Although the Law on Danger and Social Rehabilitation was repealed after Franco’s death, in 1978, and this assumed, on paper, the end of the legal penalty of homosexuals and transsexuals, the LGTB collective remained marked by other laws such as scandal public, which continued to repress all of them until their modification in 1983 and their subsequent elimination in 1989.
It was precisely in 1983 when it premiered at the San Sebastián Film Festival Dressed in blue, The first documentary that opens in Salas and shows reality, without tapujos or taboos, of transsexual women in Spain. A film that began with a police raid when they exercised prostitution. Antonio Giménez-Rico marked a milestone in the Spanish non-fiction cinema showing those women that no one wanted to see, who were sentenced to the margins and that he placed in the center. His doubts, his fears, how they fled their homes, their current life as sex workers … All in conversations that remained as a record of a time that began to change.
Despite the revolution at its premiere, the film was a drop of water in the desert. A film that was forgotten over time and rescued already in recent years thanks, among others, to the journalist Valeria Vegas, who made an essay on the film and the transsexuality in the Spain of the transition in his book Dressed blue, The same as the Javis later adapted in the form of series with the same name. They achieved a diffusion that the original film had not had and made it review with the eyes of the present, with a trans law that is now approved, but also with the rise of the extreme right that threatens transsexual people.
For Valeria Vegas, the value of the original documentary is in the pioneer that was and in the success he had in its premiere in Salas, where he remembers that it was seen by more than 200,000 spectators. For her, the work of Gímenez-Rico is “the portrait of an era”, and also knows that now “many aspects can even squeak, because there is a language that is no longer used, they themselves, the protagonists are not clear about certain aspects They don’t sometimes know or define themselves, but neither they nor anyone at that time. ”
“It brings the testimony and we should claim it more. I claimed it a lot five or six years ago and at that time I had to explain, even people from the LGTB community itself, what this film consisted of. A large majority had not seen her and I was born to write, to make that conscious essay that it was a cult film, but very minority. I think it is still a great unknown, because for many years it had no distribution and barely passed on television, ”says the journalist and writer to Eldiario.es.
That little resurgence of Dressed in blue He has made the Berlin festival select it for its Berlinale Classics section, where restored versions of important movies are projected in the history of cinema. The presentation of this renovated version – realized by the distributor Mercury Films, in collaboration with Flixolé – has had a special guest, Nacha Sánchez, the only one of the women protagonists of the film that is alive.
For her the trip to Berlin has been very special. The ovation with which the German public received demonstrates that the film, less than a week of the elections in the country where the extreme right threat, remains equally in force.
Still with the emotion on the face, Nacha Sánchez goes down to the hotel cafeteria where he stays in Berlin. It will still attend here a few more colloquiums and projections, because it knows about the importance it has and does not tire of talking about it. In fact, he confesses that he always stays to see her and always discover new things. Four decades have passed, but the question soon ditch: “I have not changed my way of thinking about anything. What has changed is that I don’t have to work on the street as before and my life is more normal, calm and relaxed. ”
The film brought good and bad consequences, because there were many insults and many closed doors. They said that where we were, that we were whores and fags
Nacha Sánchez
– Artist
Of course, now there is “more freedom.” She is grateful because during all these years they did not have the recognition they deserved, and now she thinks that she begins to have it. “Now it is recognized that what we did was to open doors, but we did not think about doing that to open nobody, because rather they closed them. The film brought good and bad consequences, because there were many insults and many closed doors. Many. They said that where we were, that we were whores, fags … you know, those expressions, ”he explains.
There he launches a reflection that Valeria Vegas also makes, and that is that one of the main changes is in language. “At least we are no longer transvestites. That word has changed and that is very interesting. The word transvestite was already bad. Now we are trans, which seems much more constructive. Trains are people who disguise themselves to make a show. That is a transvestite, not a person who is transforming his life, ”he says with forcefulness.
The recognition comes to Nacha “late.” “Notice if it’s too late that I get alone to me. The others are not. If we were all, the range of experiences would be more extensive. We would talk about the ideas we had. We were six completely different people, some older ones … It has been late, but it has come, at least I stay to recognize what we did, ”he says with a sad smile.
He never thought he would become a reference for new generations and sees him as a “responsibility.” He also knows that there will be people who do not share aspects of their way of thinking. “There are things that I have done in my life that maybe people do not agree, such as having worked on prostitution. That for many people is not of a reference, but they have to understand and more if I am really their reference. I have not done it for my own will, it was out of necessity. Like me, most. We were not suitable for common and current job. We had men’s documents. The rejection was terrible, what did we have? Or being an artist, that everyone is not appropriate to be an artist, just like not everyone is worth prostituting because it is a very difficult world. It rains, it’s cold, it’s hot, you’re in the middle of the street, people see you, insult you. We have had many problems with people who have another condition and other political ideas. They have murdered many of us. ”
That is why he says he is not afraid if those who insulted and hit them return, but it is difficult for him to call them by name because he prefers not to talk about politics. Of course, he leaves them a message: “They realize that we existed 40 years ago, and we were fighting then. Now we are some alive to continue saying that we have achieved what we wanted even if we had them against them. ”
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