Anyone from Barcelona has a memory associated with Ciutadella Park. Strolling through the park as a child to go for a boat ride on the lake or running around in front of the monumental fountain are scenes in which most of us can see ourselves represented.
On these walks we have all seen that modernist gazebo that stands in front of the monumental fountain, a space reminiscent of a French garden where today we often see dance groups practicing their steps or collective yoga and pilates sessions held in the shade of the roof of this gazebo.
We have all seen this gazebo, but perhaps few of us have stopped to look at the commemorative plaque installed in front of it, which reveals that the structure where the salsa groups dance today is called “Glorieta de la Transexual Sonia” and holds a history of violence and discrimination that deserves to be remembered.
The story of the murder of Sonia Rescalvo.
On October 6, 1991, Sonia Rescalvo was sleeping with her partner Dori at the Glorieta de la Música in Ciutadella Park. The gazebo, so called because it was originally used to host the municipal music band, served in the early nineties as an occasional shelter for homeless people, and was also a regular meeting place for homosexuals and transsexuals.
Sonia had arrived in Barcelona a few years earlier, it is not clear when, from a town in Cuenca. As this report from eldiario.es explains very well, Sonia’s life is a little mystery, of which there are hardly any spotlights in an erotic magazine Lib, where she is interviewed along with other trans people (among them Bibiaba Andersen) in 1978.
Apparently, Sonia arrived in Barcelona in the 70s, where she was a dancer in some theaters and cabarets of the Avenida Paralelo and a stripper in various locals of the city. As explained in the report, during her last years in the city she had fallen into destitution and perhaps into drug addiction as well, and that was the reason why she spent her nights at the Glorieta de la Música.
On the night of October 6, 1991, while she was sleeping in that traffic circle with her friend Dori, a group of neo-Nazis who had gone out hunting would beat up three women in the area, killing Sonia with the beating.
A symbolic murder
Sonia’s murder was the first to be taken on by the Mossos d’Esquadra, who were still being deployed as police in Catalonia, and was also considered the first to be classified as a hate crime, although this type of aggravating circumstance did not yet exist in the Penal Code. The neo-Nazis Héctor López Frutos together with his brother Isa and Pere Alsina, David Perlade, Andrés Pascual and Oliver Sánchez were arrested and convicted for the murder.
The murder of Sonia Rescalvo was a turning point for the struggles of the collective, which began to be more visible and to be treated with more sensitivity in the media. In 1993 the Coordinadora de Frentes de Liberación Homosexual del Estado Español placed a commemorative plaque at the site.
In 2011 the memory became official, with the placement of the Monument in memory of the repressed gays, lesbians and transsexuals and in 2013 the space was renamed the traffic circle as “Glorieta de la Transsexual Sònia”, placing a visible sign that is the one that can be seen today, and that reminds the people of Barcelona who walk through the park that the struggles never end, and that we must keep the memory alive so that hatred is not reproduced again.
The routes of trans memory
The story of Sonia Rescalvo is the story of so many oppressed trans women in Barcelona. Now a route that explains them, the Putiruta Trans that Violet Ferrer makes through the city, a real gem to know the other side of the history of Barcelona.