Banners located at the municipal swimming pool, the Los Príncipes, La Zarza, El Cercado, La Suerte and Antonio Yeoward soccer fields, the Iván Ramallo athletics stadium and the Basilio Labrador Sports Complex, in addition to 2,500 informative brochures and the same number of stickers –which will be distributed among the royal sports community– make up the campaign against LGBTIphobia in sport.
It is not a matter of muscle, it is rights is the motto of this initiative of the Municipal Plan for Affective Sexual Education, active since 1997, with the aim of making visible the discrimination to which some people, due to their sexuality, are subjected. in the sports field.
The mayor of Los Realejos, Adolfo gonzalezhighlighted that from public institutions «we have the obligation to raise awareness and claim the rights that athletes have, as well as to sensitize the population about the importance of understanding and respecting any diversity, including that related to sexuality, as a way to enrich life.
The launch of the campaign, in which the Councilor for Sports, Benito Dévora, and Youth, José David Cabrera -together with the area’s technical staff and sports monitors- were also present, took place on the dates prior to the commemoration of the International Day against LGBTIphobia in Sport, institutionalized every February 19 in honor of the birth of Justin Fashanu, a footballer who, in 1990, committed suicide in London at the age of 37 due to the harassment he suffered after revealing his homosexuality through the newspaper The Sun.
Adolfo González stressed that the implementation of this initiative “coincides in time with the news revealed in the last hours by Jakub Jankto”, a Getafe footballer, a club from La First division Spanish soccer player on loan at Sparta in Prague, who made his homosexuality public this week through social networks, in a video that already has more than 250,000 likes and which has been echoed by many national and international media outlets. international.
«We are facing an issue that should not be news, but in which we still have so much to raise awareness and advance that any action in this regard will contribute to making this a society based on the values of freedom, diversity and respect, as we have been promoting from the City Council of Los Realejos, a municipality declared since 2013 against homophobia”, concluded the mayor.
