“Alana I chose it and Iván, you.
Now, for me,
you are an angel
, ”said during the funeral of her daughter Maia, the mother of Alana, the 12-year-old Argentine girl who on February 21 jumped into the void with her twin sister from the balcony of her house in the Catalan town of Sallent, in the province of Barcelona.
Because Alana wanted to be Ivan.
She had asked her classmates to call her that, although she had to endure ridicule and even being referred to as "Ivana".
At times, they would harass her by yelling, “Tomboy.”
This alleged
transphobia plus the bullying
that the twins suffered at the Llobregat de Sallent public school - where they were in their first year of high school - for speaking with an Argentine accent,
cost Alana her life
.
She had cut her hair and had expressed, among her closest friends,
her desire to change her sex
.
The Spanish newspaper El País, whose first title on the tragedy of the sisters was "A girl dies and her twin is seriously ill after falling from a third floor in Sallent", has been referring to Alana as Iván-Alana
for a few days
.
"The Style Book of El País establishes in its entry on transsexual people that 'the way in which
each of these people wishes to be called
will be respected , as long as it is known, as well as the grammatical gender they choose'", He pointed to the newspaper at the bottom of the coverage of the baby's funeral.
"Sallent says goodbye to 'Iván-Alana' in private", he headlined on Sunday, February 26.
"In this case, there is only evidence of the desire of the minor, aged 12, to be treated as a man
through indirect sources,
" said El País in a clarification at the end of the article.
Neither her family nor her closest environment have spoken at the moment.
The newspaper is open to modifying the way in which the minor is referred to when more details are known.
The Therapy That Wasn't
Alana planned to discuss her desire to be a man in the first session she had on Monday, February 20, with a psychologist from the Althaia de Manresa Foundation, 40 minutes from her home.
But
she missed the
7:30 a.m. bus that connects Sallent with Manresa and, when she called the foundation to let them know that she would not arrive on time for the appointment, they gave her an appointment for the following Monday.
She had told a friend that she wanted to talk to the psychologist about
how to "whiten" her parents
that she wanted to be a boy.
But Alana couldn't wait for the following Monday.
One day after missing the psychologist's appointment,
she dropped from the third floor
.
He jumped with his sister, hand in hand.
She died from the blow.
Leila, her twin, is still admitted to the Parc Tauli hospital in Sabadell.
Last Friday, during the inauguration of the First International Feminist Meeting, organized in Madrid by the Spanish Ministry of Equality, Irene Montero, Minister of Equality, said: "I think the first thing to say today is: his name was Iván", were
the
words with which he opened the meeting.
“And that no one else has to suffer for who they are
,” Montero added to the applause of feminists from other countries, including María Noel Vaeza, UN Women's representative for the Americas and the Caribbean.
On stage, she was listened to by the spokeswoman for the Argentine government, Gabriela Cerruti.
On Sunday, while the meeting that lasted all weekend passed its last day of talks and debates, the parents of the twins, two of the grandparents, some friends and neighbors attended Alana's funeral in
Sallent
.
The stamped reminder that the funeral service company that was in charge of the baby's wake delivered to the 200 people who attended referred to her as Iván-Alana.
Next to the two names, a verse: “
When it's raining, look for a rainbow.
When it's dark, look at the stars
.
Madrid. Correspondent
ACE
look too
Leila, the twin who wanted to accompany her sister until the end but did not want to die
Argentine twins: the harsh punishment that the school applied to them for defending themselves against bullying