Have you always wanted to be a journalist?

When I was a child, I was not aware, but I realized that the vocation was going backwards: to interview my grandmother, to write a journal…

What do you like about journalism?

As I walk around the world, I meet interesting people and I always feel impulses to tell their story. On the other hand, it is a way of highlighting the issues that are taboos.

And, feminist, have you always been?

I think the same thing happens with that: consciously, I didn't consider myself like that, but I do remember a few moments. I have to say that when I was little, there were a lot of feminist women around me, not organized, but they gave me readings, for example. On the other hand, my father is quite curious and he introduced me to preoccupation with non-sexist language. I remember in the library of high school there was a book, The History of Man, and I took the man off and put the man in.

At the end of the studies he worked in El País.

In the writing of El País in the Basque Country there was a free position and I arrived there recommended by the professors of the university. It was a surprise. I was there for three years working and in principle it was my responsibility to write about university and research issues, but I could also propose my own themes, and there I could see that my main interests were feminism, immigration and racism. Then the crisis came and I decided to leave myself before they kicked me out.

Were you at ease?

I learned a lot. At that time, the elders followed me closely and I learned a lot as a journalist, but it was a pretty strong style. He had many freedoms, certainly because he worked on social issues and El País is a fairly progressive country. If I had been in politics or at international level, I would have had major conflicts, because politically I would not have liked its line. But on social issues, for example, I went to the Feminist Conference of the Basque Country and published a chronicle, wrote about transgender people…

On the other hand, I noticed that there were many obstacles to practicing the journalism that I wanted, and the writing environment was extremely male. I was a woman and a girl, and I felt very small. There were few women, and among us there was some competition or mistrust for my youth. I later learned that there were sexist comments against me, among other things, that I published a lot because my superiors considered me attractive. The truth is, I didn't feel very flattered.

He left El País and was freed from SOS Racism for a year. How has your feminism fueled the fight against racism?

Because of this, not only have I focused on the demands of white feminism, but I have questioned my pribilegioak.Interesatzen feminism in which I or we are not always victims, but sometimes we can be oppressors.

What kind of work does it take to act as a target in an anti-racist organization?

In due course, I did not see it very clear that I was not aware of this discomfort. But in some circumstances, I realized that there were dynamics of this kind, for example, a fellow militant from Senegal and I went out in the media. She was a man and I was a woman, but in this case they recognized me as an expert and he as a witness.

Then, SOS Racism organized a conference in collaboration with other feminist associations, and for me it was a very important moment. The issue of male violence and immigration came to light. The concern of white feminists was how to talk about sexual harassment that we suffered on the street, without breaking with xenophobic prejudices. But then came the feminist immigrant people and said, “You do not know what sexual harassment we are suffering from by Basque men.” It's very important to move in those spaces, because otherwise you think your oppression is the only one that exists, and that's dangerous.

In any case, you decided to return to the newspaper work and that's how he left for Pika.

I always have the need to communicate, it is my calling. One day I was a little sad, I wanted to go back to journalism, but I didn't know how, and while I was talking to professor Lucía Martínez Odriozola, she told me why I didn't create my media. We were both part of the Equal Network of Journalists. Although, in principle, the goal of this network was to influence from the media in which it existed, we realized that if we had our space, we would be freer to treat without hindrance the journalism that we wanted to do. In addition, at that time Frida magazine was closed, so in Euskal Herria there were no journals departing from feminism, at least I did not know them.

What goals did you have?

At first we met the people who were most on the Equal Network of Journalists: Maite Asensio, Lucía Martínez Odriozola, Itziar Abad and Lau. We put some money in and we designed a website. We didn't want to be a means of communication for women, for women, but to somehow demonstrate that it's possible to do general journalism, but always with feminism getting there, looking. We wanted to reach people who weren't in feminism, out of the bubble. On the other hand, we saw that in the feminism of the Basque Country, at that time, the fragmentation of the feminist movement was boiling, and it seemed interesting to us to create a space for debate among very plural feminists. Finally, to deal with the bad reputation of feminism, our weapons were humor, pleasure and freshness.

One third of the visits come from Latin America.

We didn't expect it, but we realized that the people there also read the magazine a lot and we thought it wasn't fair and that it placed us in a privileged place that we were read and we didn't look there. Then I also lived in Managua, Itziar Abad in Ecuador, and we became aware that we can learn a lot from Latin American feminism.

What did you learn?

A lot of things. I've also been to Guatemala and I've learned that you have to have a lot of humility. At first you go with your prejudices and your dogmas and you have to slowly break them and relax your feministmeter. It also appears in the book, for example, in the section of Doña Sebastián: in the indigenous communities, when a woman is mistreated, it is not a question of getting a divorce, but of getting her husband not to hit him again. Or, many of the indigenous leaders, if you tell them about abortion, are clearly against it. The key is understanding the situation in each context and listening a lot. On the other hand, the importance they attach to self-care should be highlighted. In the days, for example, there is biodance, relaxation exercises… Spirituality is introduced and Euskal Herria leaves, all rigid, as it was a great surprise.

How is journalism done from a feminist point of view?

I believe that the influence of feminism is not only in content and product, but in daily dynamics. I believe that feminism is revolutionary and that it gives rise to the journalistic revolution.

Lately we have realized that we still maintain a certain hierarchy: expert sources and personal testimonies. For example, you bring out a story about male violence and you target two older people and a woman who has been mistreated. These kinds of debates are important to us.

On the other hand, Pikara, at first, was quite personalistic, I coordinated the project and I pushed it forward, but today we have a site called the Collective Editor, we are three coordinators and the intention is that it be horizontal.

It has had and has a great public presence. How have you lived it?

When I was a blogger, I was very used to my experiences by the political staff. For example, if I was talking about sexual diversity, I was counting my trajectory from heteronormative to lesbianism. Then I realized that we were getting more and more known, and now it makes me more embarrassed, and I'm less and less present. I think we have to strike a balance: on the one hand it is very good that there are feminist communicators with great projection (Irantzu Varela, Barbijaputa), but without falling into personalisms and egotisms. I think feminism has to be very collective. Furthermore, I believe that dangerous dynamics are emerging. For example, I'm headed by Itziar Ziga: we fashion a feminist communicator, dynamics of love and hatred emerge, and then, phenomena like "you've failed me."

How can all of this be managed?

Well, for example, in the book thread, the publishers proposed to me to collect articles about feminism, but I said no, I would rather stay in the background and tell stories about others. I feel more reporter than reporter. Through social media, the projection of journalists is greater than before, and that's what we have also had to exploit ourselves, but I'm not very comfortable with that, I'd rather have stories to tell in front of me and that I'm the way.

Let's talk about ungovernable book 10. How was the process started?

It was an initiative of the editorial. Books by K.O. The publisher is focused on journalism, and they realized that there was an imbalance between male and female writers, and that feminist issues have not been worked on until now. A few years ago I was thinking of book projects both in Nicaragua and in Cuba, but then they did not materialize. Of those projects, there were a few things that I pulled out, and I saw that the main line was the identities and bodies that violate the norm.

What criteria did you follow to choose the rest of the stories?

As for identities, I looked for it quite consciously. For example, after having all the stories quite clear, I realized that there were no guys, women yes, but not boys, and then I looked for one. In the case of Gordophobia, the discussion was very lively at the time and that is why I introduced it. However, most stories I've found along the way.

What story does it particularly remember?

I can't choose, but as a journalist, it's been special because many of the characters are my friends and it's created an internal conflict for me. June laguna versus June journalist. Speaking of feminist journalism and care, at university or in traditional media, you learn that a good journalist never has to send the story to sources before publishing it, or that he has to walk with great suspicions, and this book is very collective to me, because the protagonists are not only objects of my journalism, they are also subjects, and they have had the opportunity to contribute in the text.

In this sense, you have also shown the contradictions of the characters.

Yes, for example, in the case of the garlic seller, he's homosexual, old, and suddenly I realized he was very xenophobic: I was starting to talk badly about the fruit that the Pakistanis were selling. So what, I'm going to say? Well, yeah, because he's a complex character. For me, it was important, instead of creating perfect heroes, to show their contradictions, to unravel their edges, with respect.

Many people think breaking the rules is making life too complicated, what would you say to them?

People who say that don't see the violence that those rules produce. For example, it's very easy to ask why you want to be a trance, because life is complicated, if you don't know the violence that gender binarism generates. That daily suffering is not seen by people. It is important to me that the system of oppression is considered serious and not the person who breaks it.