Marina Echebarría Sáenz (San Sebastián, 63 years old) is the first trans person to form part of the council of the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC). The resume of the professor in Commercial Law, and historical LGTBIQ+ activist, combines titles and distinctions in her field, based on almost four decades as a professor at the University of Valladolid, along with awards such as the Pluma award from the LGTBI+ State Federation.
Echebarría explains in his city how he has become a trans reference, now from a high institutional position. In his career he has had to face hate campaigns, such as the attacks in the last regional elections, when he was number two of Izquierda Unida (IU) for Valladolid: “I have had to be a symbol that barriers are broken.”
The lawyer specialized in commercial law talks in a bar in her neighborhood of Valladolid, from where she travels to Madrid by train several days a week, round trip during intense days, a vital and professional change that entails leaving “the comfort zone” of those two souls between which she beats: the pulses of the market and the LGTBIQ+ struggle.
“I have an atypical profile, a university professor who has reached the top and also an activist; things have not gone badly for me,” explains the appointed CNMC advisor on July 22 after Sumar proposed her as a member of the Regulatory Supervision Chamber. This appointment in this independent oversight body, “which is not decorative, but influences key issues such as tolls or imposing million-dollar fines,” joins its extensive history as an emblem of the group.
Echebarría was the first trans woman at a Spanish university. The teacher talks about her academic work, crowned by more than 100 publications and having become an expert in technological issues that have led her to her new position in Madrid. There he will deal with the application of European regulations on matters such as digital protection in virtual threats such as child pornography, gambling or the blocking of certain content, something that clashes with the “political crisis.” “In other times they would be technical issues of State and general interest, the relentless fight is very sad,” observes the professor. He acknowledges a certain frustration in the face of attacks such as those he suffered shortly after entering the CNMC, due to alleged “collusion with an illegal Government and corruption.”
Echebarría downplays the accusations of partisanship due to his links to left-wing formations and refutes that with any Executive there have been appointments with specific political records: "Whoever wants to use it, but they cannot pretend that whoever reaches a certain level does not have a past." She insists that her personal life and her LGTBIQ+ activism have had nothing to do with her appointment beyond the self-serving hoaxes about possible “quotas” issued by “agitators on networks and the non-serious press.” The rest, he defends, have not shown any problems.
“This should not be considered news,” he reflects, but social tension and the reactionary wave lead to hate campaigns that affect the entire group. There is a clamp between the extreme right and trans-exclusionary feminists, which “turns your life into a social debate.” “Hate is not easy to understand,” he says. The fury beats more on social networks, but she defines herself as “resistant”: “If you dare to be public you pay a price.”
The CNMC advisor has been in the movement for decades and knows this type of reaction, but Juan Gascón, head of the IU list in Castilla y León in the last elections, is still amazed: "Marina is an LGTBIQ+ reference, in her social, political militancy and in her professional work. Doing the campaign with her has allowed me to learn how the hatred of certain groups against trans activists works."
Gascón defines her as “a very politically trained, close, humble person.” Although she celebrates her position in the CNMV, “we need people like her in spaces of power”; He acknowledges that he is saddened by the “loss on the transformative left of a profile like hers, a professor of Commercial Law in a space that is quite hostile to the left.”
Echebarría highlights that in recent years the gender gap has been narrowing at the university and jokes that she often looks back and feels like she is in a movie: “You will wonder how I got here.”
Sometimes, he feels like writing a book about his experiences, complex, sometimes hard, and unconventional. Key was the year 2020, when she became the first trans professor, and at a law school in Valladolid, with conservative prejudices that she did not perceive. The teachers supported her, “some were surprised, but everyone was civil,” and her students were “great.”
Echebarría smiles when he recalls how he has met these alumni at the CNMC itself, as directors of large energy or strategic companies or in glossy law offices: "They are like my chicks; we will have done something well in this noble Castilian town."
