Pablo Bermúdez woke up on Saturday morning to the news that a few hours earlier in A Coruña, the city where he lives, a 24-year-old gay boy named Samuel had been beaten to death in the street outside a bar. Luiz.
Pablo thought he was a year older than that boy;
who works as a nurse, like that boy;
that he is homosexual, like that boy;
and that, although he no longer goes to certain bars and areas of A Coruña because they scare him, he could have ended up like Samuel Luiz, like that boy.
More information
Three arrested for the beating murder of the young Samuel Luiz in A Coruña early Saturday morning
A “human pack” kicked Samuel Luiz along more than 150 meters
Pablo confesses that in the street he usually ducks his head, changes his body posture, adopts a gesture that does not attract attention and that, to dance and have drinks, he limits himself to going to what he calls “safe places”. Not only to flee from possible aggressions, but to not bear the stares, comments, recriminations and a kind of constant humiliation that he experiences without stopping. Therefore, to dance and have drinks, choose only bars with an LGTBI atmosphere, where you can feel free. As if there were two cities within A Coruña and one, the largest, the one with the most things, Pablo had gone into exile to avoid problems. "Sometimes I think a good slap is better than being watched over and over again," he says, with a sadness in his voice that seems from another era.
Ana Fernández, 33, a lesbian, also from A Coruña, assures that a few weeks ago she was on vacation in Madrid. And that there she felt no longer free, but simply "relaxed." “Madrid and Chueca are a bubble, an oasis. Not everything is like that ”, he says. The two, Pablo and Ana, are sitting in an open-air cafe in the center of A Coruña. Nearby, on a street that overlooks Riazor beach, a sidewalk corner has been filled with bouquets of flowers, photos, messages written on paper and cardboard, stuffed animals and balloons. In that place Samuel Luiz fell down, never to get up. Neither Ana nor Pablo have come to see him. The two belong to the ALAS collective, an association from A Coruña that defends the LGTBI population.The two have a mobile phone that fumes, receiving constant messages of support and affection from other gay and lesbian associations throughout Spain for the murder.
Place where Samuel Luiz was beaten, full of flowers and messages of remembrance.Óscar Corral
Police are still investigating the case, trying to figure out whether the motive for the beating was homophobia. Both Pablo and Ana have it clear. But, deep down, it doesn't matter: the savage murder of this homosexual has served as a trigger, an excuse, to bring to light the little hell that people like Pablo constantly live in. Like Ana. Pablo, with the same fatigue in his voice, says: “Just yesterday, a few days after Samuel's murder, in the ambulance where I work, we put a trans person up. She put a name on her identity card, but she asked us to call her something else. The ambulance driver kept calling her by the name of her license. Until I asked her to stop, to call her what she wanted. And he replied: 'Ah! That you are also one of those? ' And so always ”. Ana adds:"Samuel had to happen to show what happens to us."
Pablo looks at his cell phone and clarifies: “All the messages of support that come to us are from groups like ours. Of the rest of society, no. And know? We are not the ones who have a problem. It is the rest. It's like defending the fight against racism. Not only should black people do it. " Both Pablo and Ana have gone to schools and institutes to explain homosexuality. That which Vox wants to prevent with the parental veto. Obviously, no one becomes homosexual by listening to a talk about homosexuality. But it does help to understand, to see others, to accept diversity, to learn that in your class there may be a student, or a teacher, who is homosexual and who is exactly like you, ”says Pablo. And Ana adds: “We have failed as a society to those who kicked Samuel to death.We have not been able to teach you something essential. They are going to jail for that. " “I am not afraid on the street. Yes I respect, in certain places in this city and in certain attitudes. But I refuse to be afraid. If I am afraid, hatred wins. Fear is fought with a pen, with visibility and pedagogy ”, he assures.
They speak calmly, but without losing that point of bitterness that with Samuel's murder has grown. These days they are multiplied by the media because of crime. And to the newspapers, radios and televisions that ask them, they respond and explain "the same thing that the association has been answering and explaining every day of the year." “I would like nothing more than to leave the association as useless, as unnecessary, close it forever and throw the key into the sea,” explains Pablo, who says that he arrived in A Coruña fleeing from an even smaller and even more oppressive city: Ponferrada. Ana, for her part, replies: “We are always victimized. And we do too. That's right. But I tell the younger people that things are going to go well, that we are going to fight it until the end ”.
Pablo nods. Then he adds that he is insecure, but that he has character, and that if he had been insulted as Samuel was insulted on the night of his death, calling him a fag, he would have answered the same thing that, according to Samuel's friends, he answered: “¿¿ Fag of what? "And he could have ended up like Samuel."