Let's escape media noise. What was your childhood like?

Since I was born into a family with political commitment, I have been through the demand for human rights since my childhood. I grew up with my maternal grandmother and she was a strong Republican left with which I experienced the first feminist notion. I remember when I was 5 years old saying that I had to work to guarantee the rights of those who couldn't fight, and somehow I developed my commitment to justice.

Then he studied law, but if I am not mistaken, he was about to leave school. What happened?

When I was young, I first militated on the independence left, in the feminist struggle, and when I started studying Law, in the second year, I thought I would drop out. I was not interested in certain branches of law. I thought about studying Social Education, but fortunately I didn't... [Irriak].

Why did he decide to continue?

Because I was clear about the goal. I wanted to be a lawyer, yes or yes, and I somehow understood that that I didn't like, especially administrative law subjects, I probably didn't need it. Because one of the powers of law is that, although it is a system that must be understood, it does not have to act in all branches.

He then specialized against the Machistan violence. How?

While I was studying law, I suffered violence in my skin. I remember the Machian Violence course, a multidisciplinary vision. While there, one of my friends turned around and said “this is what has happened to you.” I also saw it clear. The professor who taught that subject later was my psychologist and I asked from the beginning that I needed a premium cure because I wanted to work on it. I saw it clearly.

Why did he see it so clear?

When I lived in my skin, I didn't know where to go. Since we are the Tikis, they tell us how we should act to be a good woman, while no one prepares us for something like this to happen to us. What's more, I couldn't talk about what happened to me, because if I dialogue in the village, I would have stigma forever. But I was clear that I wasn't going to be able to complete my experience without leaving. Silence is too obsolete an option, the strategy adopted by our previous generations, and we have seen that the strategy of silence has been useless.

Things are changing. To what extent is it important to visualize violence?

I exposed my wound because if I was silent I felt scammer. It seemed incompatible to me to work with women suffering violence, without recognizing that I lived. And at that time, in 2009, even though many experiences began to emerge, there were few experiences of women who survived male violence. Nerea Barjola explains it perfectly: we can recover the violence we suffer and get out of it anyone without causing stigmas. If women have lived and survived violence, it is important to extend this message to the four winds. I am concerned about the allegory of the injury done by the media. I think that is something that needs to be done.

What do you mean?

All violence has pain, but I don't know to what extent exposure to pain at the weakest moment helps. I know that teaching a stain isn’t that attractive, but maybe that’s what we should teach…

Do the media have a challenge in relation to sexual violence?

Certainly, especially because we haven't seen Me too in journalism. Litigation is often so sensationalistic to avoid dialogue about what happens in the trade. It's a perfect trap. Most seriously, several media outlets have committed crimes: publishing filtered data or images of the victim, for example. This is now clearly protected in the Penal Code thanks to the Spanish Organic Law for the Full Guarantee of Sexual Freedom.

The documentary El sostre groc (Techo amarillo), by Isabel Coixet, on the problem of sexual assaults in the Aula del Teatre de Lleida, highlights the importance of the visualization of the violence suffered. You have also participated in the documentary and defence.

It's very nice. A few weeks ago, when I wrote the complaint from the City of Lleida, I realized that this was legal poetry. It's probably one of the most beautiful things I've ever done. I have learned a lot and it is impressive to see how the silence of the victims of several generations who passed through the Theater Classroom has ended. Not only that, the documentary is now available on the Internet, but many women who survived machista violence are emerging.

The film has produced more testimonies. What is going to happen now, the question opens up?

It seems that yes, thanks to the work published by journalists Albert Llimós and Núria Juanico in the Ara newspaper, they have managed to reveal the silence of many years. And through Isabel Coixet's documentary, the mosses call on more victims who have participated in the film to go and declare. The Prosecutor’s Office is aware of what has happened and we hope that this dossier will bring a complaint and initiate legal proceedings.

These days the debate on sexual violence is boiling. You said on Twitter that the debate goes beyond concrete cases and that the accusations are often faced with a problem: that not only do they have to prove what happened, but they have the challenge of removing an ancestral machista look.

The problem is that the generation of old lawyers believes that only with their presence, and using the arguments used so far, will the younger generations of lawyers act as they did at the time. But there has been a change and we use completely different codes. In that clash we cannot dialogue and we have an obvious advantage. Your world is running out…

An example of this is the complaint by Dani Alves, allegedly raped by the nightclub Sutton of Barcelona on 30 December. His defence is based on questioning the victim’s complaint, because the images do not say he was wrong. What do you think?

Attorney Cristoval Martell [Defense of Dani Alves] adopts a strategy of another generation that runs out: they try to question the attitude of the victim, they read the avoidant behavior as if nothing was happening. But we know that the victim acts like this because he is afraid. And that doesn't mean accepting what's going on, who would accept violence in that context? In a nightclub bathroom, with a guy you don’t know… Also this reading is always made from the male view of acceptance, as if they, men, were fascinating, and we, women, had no choice but to give in to their desire…

We cannot end without talking about the law of ‘Only Yes’. What do you think?

I would like to stress that I do not feel close to Podemos, I have never voted and my little sympathy with them is limited to saying that this law is beneficial to everyone. It is curious, because the criminal part is nothing more than a small part of the law, and on the contrary the whole debate is based on it. It implies a paradigm shift: on the one hand, because it opens the eyes to the extent that it is an organic and integral law, and on the other, because it goes beyond the criminal issue, it launches a series of services aimed at the victims.

He did not think publicly. Do you understand the scandal caused by the law?

I did not think, because I do not want to add more noise, but I find the attitude of some politicians by four votes serious. It is clear that some parliamentary groups have not read the law. I have never been ashamed to belong to the Independence Left [CUP], but these days I have felt a huge shame with his positioning. This law cannot be criticized for being punitive and those who do it lack any of the following capabilities: either they have not read or have not understood the law. There is no more.

Why?

Because the saying doesn't make sense and they only defend falsehoods, in order to differentiate politically. And as they feed that noise, in this office we get dozens of victim calls to ask what's going on with them. They're causing terrible pain.

It all began with the criminal cut that the amendment of the law has caused in a few cases.

One thing is the debate that we jurists may have on legislative technique, but, frankly, I do not believe that some political parties have enough knowledge to give their opinion on this. I have doubts on many occasions, because we are not just talking about sexual violence, but about the whole body of criminal law. It is serious and I think there is a risk of alienating people from politics. At least it has happened to me: I know what my trench, the legal trench, is, and this has completely removed me from politics.

Justice minister Pilar Llop said it is easy to demonstrate violence.

It is regrettable, especially in view of the fact that it is magistrate and that it knows very well that it is very difficult to demonstrate violence or intimidation. It is clear that a very important commodification of pain is taking place. And part of that is happening because they want to sink women from the Ministry of Equality. That is why I am particularly concerned to see that several leftist parties are participating in this reactionary response and feeding into this commodification.

Leftist parties and feminism. How do you experience that war of feminism that has increased the law?

From intellectual misery, truth. If this law is not anti-punitive, it is because they ask women not to report. I would like to know why they do not defend anti-punitivism in other areas, for example, when a police officer acts out of order in a demonstration, or when his superiors are illegally dismissed from work. So I don't have to report it either? This criticism is characterised by its poor state of progress. I insist, the worst thing is that as long as you are in that unfinished debate, those who suffer sexual violence will not call them, but us, because in the hospital there is a serious woman trying to kill her. Those who criticize are far from that reality and their behavior is cruel.

Are you worried about reducing sanctions?

I am more concerned than symbolically materially. I am concerned that 92% of victims do not report them, as this large number shows that the vast majority of perpetrators will never go through the justice system. That does concern me. And another thing that is striking is that with this law, many people who have traditionally not looked after women's rights are more concerned. Clearly rebellious lawyers have opened the speech against sanctions cuts. Of course, the reductions in sanctions remain enormous, not within the framework of this law, but in themselves; resources are often reduced from eight years to two years. I now have some questions from the Spanish Supreme Court. And I think the problem is maybe that, that we misidentify the punishments of people who perpetuate violence. Because even more than one believes, in the judicial system and in society, that sexual violence is a mere physical contact that leaves no harm.