“My name is Ana Baneira, I’m from Galicia (Spain) and author of this blog about travel and adventure”. It is the letter of introduction of ‘Arroutadas’, the website of a 24-year-old Galician woman who, when she came of age, felt the need to travel alone, learn, cooperate and commit to women’s rights.
This young woman who did not abandon the human quality that those who know her highlight, nor the social concern, was released on Saturday by the Iranian authorities, where she had been imprisoned since November allegedly for having participated in the protests unleashed after the death in police custody in September of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish girl who had been arrested in Tehran for wearing the ‘hijab’ or Islamic headscarf incorrectly.
Ana, from A Coruña who came into the world with two sisters (they are known as the Baneira triplets), belongs to a human rights NGO.
No one can describe her better than herself. He began to discover the world on his own and at his own risk as a profound act of rebellion to answer two common questions, those of “who am I” and “what do I want”, but that uprising has long been relegated because that desire of his He ended up allowing him to find his way of living, his way of maintaining himself in “continuous learning.”
They are his words. The personal website where she posts what she wants to share with other people remembers, however, her beginnings, when she really needed a change and decided to “make decisions, observe other lifestyles” and, ultimately, spend time with herself and, doing just that, showing that being a woman she was very capable of executing everything she set out to do.
The name ‘Arroutadas’ is not trivial. Ana herself indicates that this concept means, according to the dictionary of the Royal Galician Academy, “sudden and violent agitation of mind during which one loses control of oneself”. “Synonymous with breaking with everything,” this activist specifies.
With studies in Business Administration and Management, there are several sudden upheavals he went through: he spent three months on Erasmus in Tbilisi (Georgia), he participated in a support program for people with special abilities in Exmoor, in the southwest of England; he was part of a sustainable tourism program in Armenia, and helped rebuild a school in Cluses, a French commune and town located in the Rhône-Alpes region.
Closer to home, he participated in a program to eliminate invasive species in the Fragas del Eume, in Pontedeume (A Coruña), and visited 987 Galician beaches, from A Guarda (Pontevedra) to Ribadeo (Lugo), to raise awareness about the presence of garbage on the coast.
He collaborated with the Educa project, from Cáritas, giving support classes to minors at risk of exclusion; he was trained in sustainability and innovation (he worked in the sustainability department of Banco Abanca) and, thus, despite his short existence, a very long etcetera.
Her circle of friends talks about her as a very mature, empathetic, vitalist and extremely responsible girl.
Despite her extensive career, before her imprisonment Ana Baneira had shared in networks that, as a backpacker, she had made the determination to start a six-month trip through the Near East and Central Asia.
“I have decided that it will be a slow trip, without rushing, an itinerary out of the ordinary that allows me to be more aware of the places I visit and the people I meet.”
After that message, the next communication was provided by the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), which reported his arrest.
It was November 2022. Today, February 2023 is ending. That was not the pause that Ana Baneira longed for. And the itinerary, out of the ordinary, has been. But in a way never thought of by Ana, one of the Baneira triplets and, today, a global icon of activism.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
