"We are a rural 'faggot' with goats"

PalmThe immense shade of a mulberry tree protects Jan Gómez from a late June sun that tastes like August. He gets up from his chair, takes off his straw hat with a green and white ribbon –“the first thing I found at the flea market,” he says–, straightens the t-shirt that says Carpe Diem, and picks up a stick that belonged to his grandfather. To the left of the mulberry tree, the onions in the garden have bent stems, so they can fatten up; the small tomatoes peek out from between the reeds, and the sunflowers are already inclining their heads, heavy with seeds. To the right, the pen. About twenty goats emerge from it, startled, and cross the sown field as soon as Jan opens the latch. They root with their muzzles at the grain that has been scattered on the dry earth after the harvest.

Jan is only 30 years old, but he has been in the public eye for half his life. When he was 16, he joined Ben Amics, the main organization defending LGTBIQ+ rights in the Islands. He had just turned 18 when he took over the presidency, and today – after voluntarily taking a step back – he is the technical coordinator. The goats surround the bucket full of carob pods that Jan is crushing. How does someone who has spent half their life trying to change the world end up on a lost farm in Pla de Mallorca?

“I’ve always wanted to live in the countryside,” she confesses. Even as a child, when she spent her summers with her grandmother in Granada, she would sneak out at five in the morning with the goatherd to accompany him. “When we reached the first hill, he would tell me: ‘Go back, your grandmother will worry’,” she recalls, surrounded by animals. “I like goats because they are quite crazy. They are bad by nature. I didn’t want to raise sheep. They are very boring,” she adds.

The opportunity to live in the countryside came to him after the pandemic. He bought a modest little house that had ended up in the hands of a vulture fund after a foreign businessman involved in car rentals went bankrupt. “Divine justice,” he laughs, still with the carob pods in his hands. He found dilapidated cars there and had to clear the scrubland to get in. “I didn’t want to mortgage myself, but in the end, I have a payment that today would be equivalent to the price of a room in Palma.”

A cheese shop

Also, Jan is renting the mulberry farm to develop a long-term project that aims, first, for self-sufficiency and, later, to open a cheese dairy. With his partner and his grandfather's help, he sells goat kids and black pig piglets. He doesn't live off farming yet, but he would like to. “I'm a very strange person, a faggot rural with goats. Hard to find,” he says before laughing again. “I’ve always liked worlds that collide.

At first, he encountered the reservations of the farmers, who often see city dwellers as people who imagine the countryside with a swimming pool and lawn. "I know that in the village there were bets to see when the 'queens' from the city would get tired of this life," he reveals.

But the worlds that collide have always coexisted within Jan. From the child who ran away with the goatherd to the young man who survived bullying for being different and still fights it today through activism. "I liked games other than football. I was a lonely child and didn't fit the traditional masculinity model. Also, I was chubby. It wasn't easy," he recalls.

At high school, I was already involved in student social causes. Everything pointed to me becoming a veterinarian, but a head of studies changed my life. Convinced of his potential, one day she asked him if he would really be happy confined to a clinic or a laboratory. He ended up studying Labor Relations and, just as he took over the presidency of Ben Amics, a photograph of him with a fan in the colors of the rainbow during the reception that Kings Felipe and Letizia were offering to civil society at the Almudaina Palace became a symbol. The gesture monopolized the headlines of a reception that, until then, Juan Carlos I had reserved almost exclusively for politicians, military personnel, and businessmen.

They went there for three years. Then they decided not to go back. “At that time, a faggot was very useful for their photographs, but the counterpart had to be publicly defending diversity, also internationally, in a world where there are still countries that persecute it or punish it with the death penalty”.

Rosa stands out among the rest of the goats. While the others nibble on pieces of carob, she insists on seeking a caress from Jan. "She is the most affectionate. She acts as a nanny." When there isn't enough milk for the kids, Rosa feeds them. "This is an animal welfare project, about knowing where what you eat comes from. There are children who are convinced that milk comes directly from a carton. Here no animal eats feed. The whole environment is natural," she explains.

The goat's birth

The countryside demands constant attention and, if their hands are in Palma organizing Pride or fighting because the City Council has suspended it, others must take care of the animals. There have been Christmas dinners where both he and his partner have left their chairs empty because a goat was about to give birth. Meanwhile, Jan learns through trial and error and asks for advice from local farmers, too tired to believe that their knowledge still has a future. There is no school other than books and YouTube videos.

Jan's more social side has ended up connecting with his rural project. His eyes, a deep blue, no longer project the untamed fierceness of 18-year-olds. They have calmed down. Or perhaps they have been tamed.

When he was harassed at school, the Law on Equal Marriage and Adoption already existed. Since then, LGTBIQ+ rights have continued to advance, but Jan's eyes do not speak the language of optimism. "It was easier for my generation than for the current one," he says, referring to the "ideological change" driven by the far-right. "We have found swastikas drawn on school blackboards. It was unthinkable in a society that had emerged from a dictatorship and knew the value of human rights. Now the idea is spreading that human rights are something woke, a left-wing ideology. We live in a moment of change. Of regression".

How does it reverse? “If I have to be honest, I’ve given up. Or perhaps the word I should say is hopelessness. And I believe that explains why I have increasingly thrown myself into this rural project.” Jan joined activism convinced he could change the world. Over the years, he has discovered that “the world goes where it wants.” “It’s very hard for someone who has been fighting for so many years. You face enormous structures and there comes a point when you need to rest. It’s been 14 years on the front line.”

Permanent discomfort

Activism has also changed, driven by “a more individualistic society”, in which social networks “have replaced collective structures”. “We are a small island. Of faggots, there are many. Of those committed to their rights, few”.

faggots, there are many. Committed to their rights, few”.

After putting the goats away, he sits down again under the mulberry tree with the stick between his legs and his mud-caked espadrilles. “There are fewer and fewer physical meeting spaces. Most relationships go through apps and social networks. This makes this sense of community disappear. Before, you could go into a bar, meet people, make friends, fall in love, or simply chat. Now, many relationships start and end in front of a screen. Comfort dominates our lives. And activism is exactly the opposite: a permanent discomfort. It's about exposing yourself, arguing, trying to change mentalities. It goes in the opposite direction to a society that only seeks Netflix, sofa, and air conditioning”.

According to Jan, there is no relief. And identities – despite the proliferation of concepts – are increasingly understood from the self. “I grew up thinking there were irreversible consensuses. Now I see that they break with enormous ease, based on increasingly simplistic and aggressive discourses,” he says as he wipes the sweat from his forehead.

Rural activism

He had no choice but to open an Instagram account. “If you want to mobilize, you have to be where the people are.” He will use it to talk about rural activism. He will be able to explain how he braids garlic to have it all year round, how in winter he opens jars of tomato sauce from local varieties made in the summer, and how the whey from future cheeses will feed the pigs. It's all part of the same cycle.

Perhaps despair also recycles itself, just as animal manure nourishes the garden. “An activist never completely gives up. He takes a step back, regains strength, and waits for the moment to return. But each time it becomes clearer to me that returning to the land, cultivating, and raising animals is where I want to be. Returning to the land is also a form of struggle,” he says, surrounded by bales of straw. Under the shade of the giant mulberry tree.