The power of a supportive community can change your life

I grew up in a town in the north of Spain, in Galicia. You can call it a town, but it is very small. For young people learning about themselves, there were absolutely no role models. No examples to look up to.

Gay was not even a word; it was just something bad that happened in bad areas of big cities. I remember hearing about "that guy” who was homosexual, and let’s just say, people didn't talk about him in a nice way. Nobody wanted to be seen with him. For me, being just a kid, my earliest memories were about how it’s a bad thing to be homosexual.

But I learned about other perspectives, through TV or books. I remember watching this one episode of Friends where two women get married. I must have been only 13 or 14, and my dad came in, took the remote and changed the channel, saying “they are indoctrinating our kids with this stuff”.

So although there were no role models, access to the wider world helped me understand who I was. When I was around 16, I knew.

At a certain point in my life, I had to come out to my parents. I was living in Madrid and my girlfriend and I wanted to get married. We’d been living together for 9 years at that point, without my parents knowing the reality of “my roommate”.

You can imagine how it went. It was horrible.

“You're not my daughter.”

“We didn't raise you to be like this.”

“You should be dead. It would be better if you were dead.”

And all the bad things that you can imagine. For a year, we hardly spoke. And when we did, it was shouting over the phone, my dad taking the phone, and throwing it to the other side of the room.

It was a tough, tough situation. Honestly, I did expect it and I didn't want anything from my parents. I just said, “This is what it is. You can be part of my life moving forward or you can decide not to. I cannot change you and I will not fight to change you. You are entitled to feel as you wish.”

At that time, I was about to start my job at Roche. I didn’t know anything about Roche’s policies, its culture or the people. My parents told me in one of our fights over the phone that I would be kicked out of this company, because such companies don’t want disgusting and sick people like me.

But I wanted to work for Roche and work on improving people’s lives. After only a few months at Roche, I saw a Roche brochure in the lobby that supported the LGBTQ+ community. And I thought to myself, “Hey, this company actively and openly supports us”.

Right away it made me feel better and I took the brochure with me.

A couple of months later when I saw my parents face-to-face, I showed them the brochure to prove how this company supports me and people like me. This company flies the rainbow flag. They want us to make a difference, by being ourselves, appreciating our diversities, no matter who we are and what we believe in.

Now, my parents have always been focused on my education, that I got good grades, that I go to a good university, that I get a good job. And for them to see that this big international company that cures cancer also supports employees who belong to the LGBT+ community, completely changed the way they saw things, in fact it changed the way they saw me. It changed the way they thought about gay people in general, about living a more open life.

Now I’ve been with my wife for 18 years. We have a two-year-old baby and my parents are the happiest grandparents in the world. And this change in their minds started with this rainbow-coloured Roche OPEN brochure.

My story has a happier ending than most. There is still a lot of work to do. In Spain, we have moved forward in the last 20 years, but there are other places where we still need to move forward, where we still need to be active, where we still need to support our employees, colleagues and friends to be their true selves. 

We have to remember that there are places in the world where it's illegal to be gay, where you can be sent to jail, or worse.

I believe we still need greater social acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community - being open is the way forward. The best way to reach social acceptance is to keep talking about it and showing allyship and support because you never know what tiny gesture or trigger as simple as a brochure can change someone’s life.