At just 24 years old, he is the youngest president in the history of the SOS Racism Association in Madrid. Her parents emigrated from Gambia to Aragon in the 1980s, was born in Huesca and currently resides in Madrid. Eldiario.es works as a journalist and says on the newspaper's presentation page: “No matter what topic you’re dealing with, the most important thing is people’s vision, then everything else comes.”

You've been auctioned as a slave and you've also received death threats on social media.

They're the most serious cases, but in my life, they insult me endlessly. “Go back to your country,” “calla, black slut”… In the end you get used to it and I don’t answer them anymore. The threats yes, I denounced them, but justice is not prepared to combat racism. As there are specialized courts, specific regulations or direct telephones to deal with male violence, we would also need that starting point in the case of racism. The victim of racism does not often know that there is a prosecution for hate crimes, it is a very marginal institution, and it is often left to the judge’s degree of awareness of the punishment or not, but it should not be: we need clear rules for certain facts to have a specific sentence automatically. Insults and racist threats are systematic and most are archived: the message given to society is that in exchange for emptiness someone comes out because of the color of their skin, and this impunity implies legitimizing racist discourse.

I will ask you the question you ask yourself in an article: “How can hate crimes be effectively prosecuted without limiting freedom of expression?”

This dilemma is probably best reflected in social media: people write racist, macho, homophobic comments and then say it's freedom of expression. But to what extent is freedom of expression and to what extent is it a crime of hatred? We have the two extremes of bad application: When Caesar Strawberry, Def's singer with Dos, was tried on charges of insulting the victims of terrorism, I think there was an exaggerated application of the rules, while very clear hate crimes are considered by justice as freedom of expression. It is important for justice to set a clear limit, so far it is freedom of expression and from now on the crime of hatred, so that it is not in the hands of the judge’s degree of awareness.

The problem is who sets the criteria for that limit and depending on what, right?

There is indeed a great risk that they will be made and politicised on the basis of specific interests. That is why it is important to develop these laws with the participation of social associations. For example, the Anti-Discrimination Act did so and served to ensure minimum mechanisms. The truth is that then the PP came to the government and suspended the law.

I've read to you that it's structural racism.

If you are a gypsy, the police will stop you ten times more than a white one in the Spanish state, if you are black eight times more, if you are Arab seven times more… I have friends who have stopped police at 10-11 years to ask for documentation! I have also been banned from entering the nightclub; I can give a lot of examples. In the media, in the expressions we use... there is a lot of racism, conscious and unconscious. We have to train people in values and in diversity.

Besides effective justice, is training the solution?

At least two legs of the solution are fundamental. People say that today in schools there are students of different colors and different skin and that if they are educated together, racism is not going to happen, but it is not enough to be together, if there are no diversity policies behind them. We also have a mother, a sister... and our society is very macho. At school, a common practice of working with cultural diversity is for each one to have a meal from their country, but that's how you're emphasizing the differences, and it would be more interesting for the Senegalese student to bring food from Bilbao, Argentina from Romania, etc. It is only a small example, since nothing is done in the centres in this area. Students are told that racism is wrong, but they talk conceptually, they don't explain the reality of that racism.

Has the racist attitude become more embarrassed by the refugee crisis and xenophobic populism?

The prejudices were there and there they are, but lately there are people who have found a way to legitimize those speeches. Migrants are rapists, they come to live from subsidies, to take away the work while you are unemployed… Politicians have seen that those speeches that confuse everything as they should, can take advantage of it, largely due to the economic crisis and in part to the increased diversity of society, which many see as a threat. The problem is that in these speeches that are intensifying, we don't know how to build solid alternatives, based on tolerance, diversity and inclusion. Often the reaction is to respond to their speeches and recently we've seen how one of the most important slogans in Donald Trump's decisions has been Λ, but it's not the way to sustain what we have to mobilize every time they do something. We need to build an alternative discourse that gathers people suffering from racism, homophobia, machismo… Although every struggle has its peculiarities, we share many things, and among all of us we should develop a message that reaches the social majority so that the movements of the far-right side do not get any more followers.

In one article it says that not only politicians, but also citizens use similar speeches, claiming the right to be politically incorrect.

Yes, you hear people complain that today it can't be politically wrong, because otherwise multicultural collectives, feminists or the LGTB community are on the rise. But I understand that it's politically incorrect to hold an opinion that doesn't match the majority view, while saying that women deserve death or that black people are criminals is not to be politically wrong, but to be male and female. It is no coincidence that this political injustice is claimed by the oppressors and, moreover, victimized, placing at the same level the freedom to expel them and the defense of the tolerance of the insulted groups. We have to be able to turn that around, to make us see that they are not victims, but oppressors.

We have become accustomed to thinking that they are foolish and to looking from our moral superiority, convinced that our discourse is better and that we do not have to explain it; it is a problem that has people on the left. However, the ultra-right discourse continues to grow and, in the end, is legitimized for much of society. There's the Social Home [fascist movement opposed to migrants] of Madrid: “There are four foolish cats with ideas from the time of Hitler,” we said, but gradually they have been growing, they have created a job market, they have an echo in the media, the next step will be to create a political party… We have been seeing all that process, and we have not done anything, we have not been able to build a discourse against, it has been a mistake to despise those people. I went to see the last manifestation of the Social Home, and those who were there could be my shopkeeper or my gym monitor, because that discourse has reached broader areas of society from the outermost sector.

You're critical of yourself...

It is we who have to work to make this reality much more visible. “All the guilt is PP,” I could say, but what have I done to change the reality? What have I done to appropriate the space occupied by the PP? We know how to identify what is wrong, but without self-criticism, we will always be able to reduce it, we will always be the counterpoint of what is in power.

You're also critical of the Left, and you've reflected it in the article The Left's Self-Indulgence Against Racism.

Go to a series of talks on refugees and migrants and there are no refugees or migrants among the rapporteurs. People who have carried out some research on racism, a judge who has dealt with these issues … and the only role left to people who have suffered racism in these areas is that of the victim: they testify to the racism they have suffered and then the white experts in the environment will take the floor to give their opinion and propose solutions to it. Why not ask them to propose solutions to those who suffer from racism and know that reality firsthand?

Historically, the Left has taken a leadership that I think does not belong to it, whites have led the fight against racism, and at one time it could be an excuse that there were few blacks, but now Latinos, the Arabs, who are very prepared and are activists, are all too well. And if you give these people the opportunity to talk and make proposals and demonstrate their skills, it will gradually gain visibility and be easier to reach institutions and power points with the capacity to generate change. If, on the contrary, the only option that this person has is to tell again and again their case as a victim, besides representing themselves only as a victim, what change can it bring?

It is curious, I remember that in the events of the ICN in Madrid [several migrants who were at the Internment Center for Foreigners went up to the roof to denounce the unfair treatment suffered there] The authorities of Podemos repeated long ago that they were fighting to close the ICN. Lie, I've never heard of CIE until that happened. They had the opportunity to create a group with those who know the ICN closely, with the people who have been inside -- so that they would talk to parliament, come up with solutions. Instead, they took all the leading role.

This way of operating has also played a major role in both institutional and social matters. Many of the demands are made of the institutions, the European Union, the Government of Spain… but the representatives we have in the institutions are not aware of the issue. On the contrary, instead of looking so much at the institutions, we should look at the diverse social reality that we have, fight on the street and join forces, because the more people become aware, the greater the pressure that can be exerted on the institutions, from the bottom up.

What's the place you're fighting? In Navarra, on the occasion of the death of Senegalese Elhadi Ndya in the hands of the police, they protested to clarify the case and there were hardly any targets among the participants…

It can also be seen in another way: visibility and the street were occupied by blacks to denounce a situation that directly affects them. Let me give you an example. In Madrid is the Afro Space, where African-American people talk to us about things that affect us. If there is room to talk about the damage of male violence, it seems logical to me that women should take the floor and that my contribution as a man should be heard. In Navarre, migrants have suddenly assumed leadership and some white people may have felt marginalized, but the key is to rethink the struggle, which is now to support the collective.

He has also written about the racism in football, with the habit of making the monkey to insult black players. There are also many chauvinist and homophobic attitudes in the stands. Is the world of football particularly machito and retrograde? The worst reflex of society?

A spectator has recently insulted a female referee and subsequently claimed that he cannot insult his wife at home. It seems that you're legitimated at the football stadium to do what you don't say or do in everyday life and in other areas. There are many examples of chauvinist and racist posters brought out by the public, but no action is taken. And I'm also critical of athletes, because it seems they can't have political ideas. When they threw a banana into the camp from the grade, Neymar launched a kind of denunciation on social media, eating a banana, but over all these years we have not known a more forceful attitude against racism in football people and I find it embarrassing; in the NBA players are speeding up, if there is a minimal racist tone, or speak out against Trump’s immigration policy. Here, on the other hand, it’s all about being part of the game, but it’s not the same to call the player “lame” of the audience as to call him “whore black.” Every time something like this happens, the player can say that he will leave the field; if he does nothing, the children who consider him an idol will think that football is like this. And no, what is not socially accepted should not be admitted to the football field.

He says that oppressed groups need a unified discourse. Do we need more alliances between struggles?

The groups affected by discrimination can be grouped around bases and join forces to make progress, and then each movement can fight from its particularities. For one reason or another we are many discriminated against and well-organized we can achieve a social majority. In the Women's March against Trump, despite the fact that women are the focus of the struggle, they also went out to denounce homophobia, xenophobia and other oppressions, different groups supported each other and the fight against Trump has managed to articulate many struggles in one. We've seen that there's the ability to channel intersectionality and bring movements together.

LAST WORD: Media

“The media has contributed to spreading a black profile in society: in the news, you’ll always find yourself in relation to migration, sport, music or crime. And in the end, people see you and think that you know how to play basketball, that you've been kicking or that you've been stealing the bag. Where are black doctors in the media or black experts in any other area, talking about this issue?”