Fifteen years later, Conchi still has tears as she remembers the day Congress approved the Equal Marriage Law. “It was a great fight. I remember how that day we were watching the plenary session on television at home. Then Pedro called us on the phone and told us about it; I still have tears”, Recalls the sister of the then deputy of the Socialist Party, Pedro Zerolo, who pushed the government of the president Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to pass a law that would take a further step towards equality for people and placed the country at the forefront of LGTBI rights. “For once in life, Spain had arrived on time to the appointment for equality“, remember Conchi Zerolo which is now part of the Zerolo Foundation what preserves the legacy and memory of his brother.
With the perspective that three decades provide, the evolution towards the normalization of diverse loves and relationships has grown exponentially despite the fact that groups of lawyers and some parties defend rather anachronistic ideas. The intention to remove rainbow flags from the facades of the Administrations relying on the judgment of the Supreme which eliminated the possibility of unofficial symbols appearing on it, does not point directly to the Lgtbi flag. In fact, the Ombudsman, in response to a letter from the association Arcópolis, stresses that “the sentence solves the problem of the concurrence of official flags with other pro-independence ones, but it does not pronounce, neither for nor against, on the use of flags, emblems or symbols of social movements, of collectives, etc., so they do not have no impact on the rainbow flag”.
“We are used to having stones put in our way and this is also cyclical to some extent. It is inevitably the way of society; human rights prevail over intolerance and prejudice. These people have much more speaker than they deserve due to the number of people who represent them ”, reflects the General Director of Diversity of the Government of the Canary Islands, Victor Ramirez.
The Canarian Executive trusts during this legislature to further promote support for LGTBI people with the aim of “improve their social and labor integration”, Emphasizes Ramírez, who pays special attention to the realities of the elderly:“ many of them were reprisals and with problems of labor insertion. We have designed specific financial aid for those who have financial problems for orientation reasons. It will be offered to them so that they can have a certain support during the last years of their life, ”he says.
On the way to the fight for equal rights, Ramírez considers that in the Canary Islands “there is a melting pot of cultures that allow us to understand diversity as a value in itself”. For this reason, it is committed to the integration of lgtbi realities in the context of nursing homes despite acknowledging that it is a “very difficult task.” As is done in education, “we do not want to segregate the elderly”And for this he announces the development of a study that will allow knowing “how we can work so that these people feel comfortable and the rest know live with that diversity”.
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