Can you get HIV and have safe sex without a condom? What is the difference between HIV and AIDS? Fight against the stigma and discrimination that people with the human immunodeficiency virus still suffer, but also against ignorance. That is the spirit that gives life to the second call for Positive Pride that will take place in Madrid and will end with a demonstration in Castellana on the morning of October 21. The capital is once again the nerve center of this mobilization that seeks to raise awareness in society that people with HIV deserve the same respect and opportunities as any other.

The president of the State HIV and AIDS Coordinator (CESIDA), Reyes Velayos, still remembers with enthusiasm the 2,000 people who paraded in last year's Pride Positivo, the first edition of the call.. “Our intention is to draw attention to the stigma and discrimination associated with HIV that still exists, 43 years after the initial diagnosis,” in their own terms. It is estimated that in Spain there are still about 150,000 people who carry the virus. While 25% of new infections at the state level occur in the Community of Madrid, the main objective of UNAIDS is to eradicate it by 2030.

From the Coordinator that brings together 77 entities from all over the country, they consider that “the time has come for the silence to end”. This is said by a Velayos who does not overlook the great progress achieved thanks to this particular Pride: many people have said that they suffer from AIDS in their immediate environment after having been surrounded by so many people around them.. Making HIV visible is the best way to end stigma, in short.

Less stigma in the big city

The Positive Pride of this 2023 not only includes the call for mobilization that will take place next Saturday, but within the program there are many other activities linked to culture, sports and training. Madrid will thus become the capital of the fight against discrimination against HIV-positive people.. “It is true that escaping the stigma in big cities is somewhat easier than in small ones,” Velayos repeats..

Given that HIV is something transversal that can affect any type of person, CESIDA focuses its help on the most vulnerable, such as women, trans people, the LGTBI community and the migrant population.. In this sense, in the big city the stigma is not as “social” as it could be in a small municipality.. “Really, after more than four decades of epidemic, we have witnessed health and clinical success, but also a social failure due to the stigma that still persists,” says Velayos herself..

When HIV was a death sentence

The person who has been able to overcome the fear of openly saying that he suffers from AIDS is Dominique Cubellf, who has been carrying the diagnosis behind him for 36 years.. This 57-year-old Catalan remembers how when she was 21, the fateful news was confirmed to her: “I was trying to get off drugs when they did a routine test at the hospital.”. The news was given to me by my family doctor, without me even knowing that I had been tested.. At that time, being told you had HIV meant the same as being told you were going to die,” he says..

At that time, the information was not the same as it is now.. The shock that affected Cubellf did not prevent him from telling his mother and father.. The latter, shortly after, mentioned it to the owner of the bar he was going to, so without me knowing it, I think that many people in my neighborhood knew my situation.. It was not until 1996 when she decided to go to an association that brought together different people who suffered from HIV, and from there she moved to women's groups.. “Even so, I didn't say it openly either,” he points out..

With almost 60 years and a great personal work done, now he is not afraid to say that he is an HIV-positive person. “What you can't be is silent all your life. Some time ago, a friend with HIV was going to come with me for an interview and in the end she didn't because her son told her that if she did, her colleagues would discriminate against her at work,” Cubellf exemplifies.. For her, the stigma took shape in those phone calls in which she was denied the job she had just found in her neighborhood because they had already found out that she had the virus..

References with HIV appear

He also found stigma in the painful comments he has had to endure from different health professionals, curiously enough.. “I was going to have an analysis done and, even in that situation, they told me that I was sure that I had not contracted HIV through drugs, that I looked very good and that I was very pretty,” she illustrates.. More examples: when you go to the dentist, on many occasions, they leave it for last, just as you saw a red circle at the top of your medical record to indicate that you had HIV.

Jesús Carballo is one of the few references that exist at the moment within the group. He is Mister Canarias and was second finalist in Mister Gay Spain. “They told me this 14 years ago, when I was 18, and they told me just like that: take advantage of your time because you don't know what you might have left,” he recalls.. Luckily, this fashion designer enjoys the treatment, already widely expanded in Spain, which allows HIV to be undetectable.. That is, you cannot infect it, which translates into the possibility of having sexual relations without a condom, for example..

The support he has missed, he says, has been more emotional: “If I wanted to talk about it with someone, I couldn't find that person.”. “I want people to see that they are not alone, which is why a lot of my content on social media revolves around this fact.”. Carballo has become one of the best-known faces of the Vihsibles campaign, carried out by Mister Gay España, which has now teamed up with CESIDA. “We still see how some people do not know how to differentiate between HIV and AIDS, when the latter, really, is the last phase of the disease,” concludes the canary..

Early retirement for people with HIV?

Cubellf, for his part, sees how young people are also not aware of what they can expose themselves to with an active sexual life without protection.. “I have raised a boy as if he were my son and he tells me that he knows the people he sleeps with, that I shouldn't worry because they have a good body and a good face, when their physical appearance has nothing to do with the illness,” it states.

Likewise, it claims that the bodies of people with HIV have endured all types of experimentation with medications.. “Studies say that we age 10 years earlier due to all the drugs we have taken in our lives, so they should advance our retirement a decade. I know of people who have thought about stopping taking the medication and getting worse so they could stop working, because they couldn't take it anymore,” concludes this Catalan..