Scaling mountains for change

Five months ago, Sonia Bañeza visited the EL PAÍS newsroom to discuss her decision to begin a two-year process, including hormonal treatment and surgery, to change her sex and leave behind her past as Carlos.

Since then, the most notable changes in the 42-year-old from the Basque Country border town of Irún are softer skin and, following cosmetic surgery, a more feminine face. A slow but sure metamorphosis is clearly underway after almost a year of hormone treatments.

Sonia is accompanied by her friend and mentor Sonia Bustillo, a transsexual who was already several months into the process when they met. She has been able to offer invaluable advice based on her own experience. Both have families: Bañeza has two small children, and Bustillo, a son aged 21.

"When you decide to take the step, you always look for somebody with experience that can help you along the way," says Bustillo.

Transsexualism, understood as the identification with a gender other than the individual's biological sex, is still a controversial and largely misunderstood subject. The decision by the two Sonias to tell their story is based on their belief that transsexualism needs to be better understood by society. They also want to break the association in many people's minds with prostitution. "It is hard to make people understand what we are going through," says Bañeza. "Just try to imagine what it is like to look in the mirror and what you see is not what you feel: to not find yourself."

Bustillo, 44, runs an auto workshop in the Basque town of Deusto. She tells the story of the day that she met the parents of a 24-year-old transsexual at a meeting of Errespetuz, a regional association that brings together people with gender issues. "They were so happy to see that their son's friends were all normal people. What must they have been thinking up until then?"

Bañeza adds: "It is easier just to see this as all to do with sex, and it is true that some transsexuals are involved in prostitution, but that is not the only way to pay for the treatment and to live."

Sonia Bañeza was married for eight years before separating two-and-a-half years ago. "This is the most difficult part. My wife was not expecting this, and how do you tell a small child that daddy is now going to be a mummy. You have to take things slowly," she says.

Both Sonias are undergoing hormone treatment. After two years, they will then be legally able to apply to have their identity cards and other documentation changed. Both want to have surgery. Sonia Bañeza, a climbing enthusiast, says her goal is to be the first transsexual to reach the summit of an 8,000-meter mountain.

"There are transsexuals who know when they are 16 what their future is. I thought that I was ill. I have spent a lot of my life denying who I am, but then I realized that I was going against nature. I feel like a woman, and I want to be one. So I am going to face the world as a woman," she says.

In October, she wants to travel to Nepal to take on a 6,500-meter peak. If that goes well, in 2012 she will climb Cho Oyu, the sixth-highest mountain on the planet. "I suppose you could say that I have already climbed my first mountain by becoming a woman, but this is a personal challenge and a dream for any climber: I want to show the world that transsexuals have fighting spirit," she says.