The Cabildo de Tenerife has approved the motion to award the activist Carla Antonelli the Gold Medal. “These are days when you pinch yourself to know that everything that happens is reality,” said the politician on her social networks.
“My Tenerife, my Canary Islands always with pride and in the most intrinsic part of my heart”, Antonelli insisted, who thanked Sí Podemos Canarias for having led this initiative. Specifically, he has made reference to counselor David Carballo, promoter of this motion.
The motion is approved @PodemosTfe / @DavidCarballoTF in it @CabildoTenerife to initiate the file of Honors and Distinctions to grant me the Gold Medal of Tenerife. I can only say THANK YOU, THANK YOU, these are one of those days that you pinch yourself to know that everything you… pic.twitter.com/turt9i28ow
— Carla Antonelli / 🏳️⚧️☂️ (@CarlaAntonelli) June 8, 2023
Sí Podemos Canarias brought this motion to the plenary session of the Cabildo de Tenerife this Thursday in order to recognize the activist and politician from Tenerife, who is renowned throughout the world for her tireless defense of the rights of LGTBI people.
Carla Antonelli was born on July 13, 1959 in the municipality of Güímar, Tenerife, but soon had to leave her hometown in 1977, already at that time it was unthinkable that a transsexual person could develop their gender identity and their happiness in a rural setting. She lived through the rabid blows of the Franco dictatorship and post-Franco regime, in addition to the police persecution and the terrible beatings to which she was subjected in the police stations.
In Spain, until 1979, trans and homosexual people were arbitrarily imprisoned under the Law of Social Danger and until 1988 with the figure of “public scandal” but already at that time he asked for the vote in the first democratic elections for the PSOE. In 1980 he recorded the first thematic documentary on transsexuality that was broadcast on Spanish Television (TVE-2). This documentary was hijacked by censorship and was not broadcast until September 1981, after the failed military coup attempt against democracy by Lieutenant Colonel Tejero of the 23F.
But Antonelli is already a prophet in his land and the city where he was born currently has a street named after him, inaugurated on May 15, 2021. Among his many distinctions, he has obtained throughout his long career the 2020 Ministry of Equality Award, for the vital commitment to equality on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination Against Gender Violence. In 2008, she was also awarded by the transsexual groups of Catalonia and Andalusia for being the promoter of the Gender Identity Law, and by the Madrid Transsexual Collective for her historical trajectory and for her activism in defense of the rights of transsexual people. .
The woman from Tenerife was the first and only transsexual woman to access a seat as a deputy in Spain and the third in the world to obtain parliamentary representation. Antonelli acceded to the position after the regional elections for the Community of Madrid in 2011, being a parliamentarian until in 2021, where he was part of the lists of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party for three legislatures. In these last 28M elections, she was again elected by the Mas Madrid formation for the XIII Legislature.
Antonelli was also spokesperson for the Transsexual Area of the State Federation of Gay, Lesbian and Transsexuals of Spain and spokesperson for the media of the Madrid Transexualia Collective. She with wide worldwide recognition, she traveling to Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Honduras, Portugal or Argentina, she invited by transsexual groups from these countries to international meetings. In Mexico, she even intervened in the Chamber of Deputies invited by the country’s authorities.
