Lidia Falcón O’Neill is a legendary figure in Spanish politics. Half a century ago, she stood up to Franco as head of a cell in the communist Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia. In 1974, this opposition led to her being brutally tortured:
‘When she fainted they untied her and laid her on the ground. They woke her up with a bucket of water. … She stayed on the ground, wet, for hours, until they took her down to the cell. … On the sixth day, the torturers could not continue with the same sessions. They could no longer hang her on the wall because she was rapidly losing consciousness because of it. So, when she woke up, she kept getting punched and kicked while lying on the ground.’
Now aged 85, Falcón – who is president of the Feminist Party of Spain (PFE) – is back on the frontline of Spanish politics – and her latest detractors are the transgender mob who tolerate no dissent on the discussion of gender.
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