Barcelona has a heterogeneous group of trans women who live and work in this city. For some of these women, sex work emerges as their main source of income. This situation places these women outside the general framework of rights and duties in which the rest of the citizenry is subject; a situation that can often arise or be associated with the development of situations of vulnerability.
Faced with this situation, in early 2016 the Barcelona City Council launched a commission aimed at designing a program of actions for the population of trans women who develop sex work in Barcelona. The goal was to substantially improve their quality of life and protect their rights of citizenship. In order to respond to this renewed commitment of the Barcelona City Council to the group of female trans workers and former sex workers in the city, a joint professional team was established between Spora Sinergies and the University of Vic. In the framework of this collaboration, a group of experts in sex work and in transsexuality –from the academic world and the associative world– was incorporated to the team. In the same way, we worked together with a group of trans women who develop or have developed work sex in the city. The work of research and consultancy resulted in the design of a set of actions that respond to the needs and proposals worked from and with this group itself. The implementation of the actions is expected to take place in 2017.
The proposed actions have been grouped under the name of “CAROLINES PROGRAMME”. Carolines is the name with which transvestite women were known during the ’30s in the district of the Raval of Barcelona. The name proposed emerges as an exercise of historical memory on the struggle for sexual freedom and gender identity that has known the city of Barcelona throughout the decades, which continues very alive today.
