Voices from the Ghetto: Trans Lives, Chances of Survival and Hopes for Change in the Vigo of Political Transition

Abstract

In the city of Vigo, in the late seventies and early eighties, both the development of the first sexual liberation movements in Galicia during the transition and the articulation of new spaces of sociability and survival converged. However, at six kilometres from the city centre in a tourist and coastal enclave, an industry of morbidity and the forbidden thrived, providing job opportunities to a heterogeneous community of nomadic trans lives returning from endless sexilies. The interest of the press in this referential space for a heterosexual and well-off public allowed for first-person expressions that hint at denunciations of their daily problems, demands for change, and hopes for liberation. To better understand this environment, we will approach the functioning of these night-time enterprises, trying to elucidate their connection with the authorities and the means used to materialise their interests. In this sense, we will reflect on the legal and police persecution that affected - not only - these trans lives, but also their voices and those who helped to bring them out of the closed drawer of forgetfulness and ostracism.