The Spanish Summer Camp Trying To ‘Queer’ Kids

A children’s summer camp in Spain has sparked a string of alarming safeguarding allegations. What should have been a fortnight of normal camp activities was, according to several attendees, more like a carnival of horrors. The camp, organised by non-profit youth group Sarrea Euskal Udalekua Elkartea, was held from August 8th to 23rd in the village of Bernedo, and was hosted by a controversial trans activist who had previously boasted about wanting to “indoctrinate” children.

In the weeks since the camp took place, a number of very serious allegations have come out about inappropriate treatment of children there at the hands of the adult counsellors. Letters sent home to their families detail some of the uncomfortable situations the kids were put in, including having their phones confiscated and being forced to shower in mixed-sex facilities alongside adults, and that they were completely cut off from the outside world—to the point where one girl, who takes blood-pressure medication, was prevented from going to the pharmacy or hospital to receive treatment. Another letter from a different child reported that all the mirrors were covered up in order to help encourage “body positivity.” One of the mirrors was obscured by a drawing of a naked woman with her legs spread apart, with the text “Enjoy your meal” underneath. Other reports allege that a staff member exposed his genitals, covered only by plastic wrap, to the children as part of a reenactment of Basque mythology. Local residents also complained that some of the adult counsellors could often be seen walking around the town topless, swimming naked in the pool, and smoking cannabis around the children. Basque police are now officially investigating 12 allegations made about the camp. 

As if this horrific situation couldn’t get any worse, this wasn’t even the first time the authorities had heard complaints about the camp. Before the camp opened its doors again this year, complaints had already been recorded from as far back as 2019 about children showering naked with adults of the opposite sex, being made to hug counsellors while half-naked, and having to pull their trousers down to receive food. One girl, who came from a vulnerable background and had a history of sexual trauma, said that she had been made to suck a counsellor’s toe in exchange for an afternoon snack. Another boy, who was 15 when he attended the camp, said that the counsellors “talked to us about whether they were homosexual … and they asked me what I liked … There was a boy who didn’t want to undress to shower, and the monitor pulled down his underwear.” Tellingly, the local council made the decision to stop sending children in care to the camp but for some reason did not escalate these complaints. 

You have to ask what kind of parent would send their child to a ‘transfeminist’ camp in the first place. Well, it wasn’t always this way. The camp was originally founded as a way to teach kids about Basque culture and language. According to the camp’s website, its main aim is to “help children live in Basque, to show that Basque is a useful tool for everyday life, and bring together children from all over the Basque territory so that they can take home from summer camps the richest possible view of Basque and Basque culture.” Only in recent years has the event been ‘queered’ and now focuses on promoting “body positivity and acceptance of gender diversity.”

The organisation that runs the camp, Sarrea Euskal Udalekua Elkartea, is rife with trans activists. One board member and ‘nonbinary’ performer, 23-year-old Aner Peritz Manterola, recently wrote for a Basque paper that he believes society forces “cisheteronormativity” onto children. “Just as we have learned that macho violence is answered with transfeminist violence,” he wrote, “ we also know that heterosexual education is answered with transmaribollo education.” This term transmaribollo literally translates to “fag-dyke,” but has been ‘reclaimed’ by trans, lesbian, and gay people in Spain in a similar way to ‘queer.’ Peritz continues: “We want to ‘faggotise’ your children (since we usually don’t have children of our own) so that you don’t heterosexualise them,” he wrote. “And we also have teaching degrees.” It’s hard to read this as anything other than a blatant threat. 

You might think that any youth organisation, when confronted with both deeply concerning allegations from minor camp attendees and the disturbing words of a board member, would respond with an apology and immediate safeguarding overhauls. Far from it, Sarrea Euskal Udalekua Elkartea released a statement earlier this month doubling down on its attempt to ‘queer’ children. It called the complaints the camp had received from parents “transphobic” and even defended the decision to make kids shower together, describing this as “an opportunity to normalise all bodies, break stigmas, and free ourselves from shame and sexualisation.” Apparently, “bathrooms and showers are a tool to divide people according to a binary and gender logic,” which in turn “causes situations of discomfort and discrimination.” Nevermind that the children in question clearly felt significant amounts of discomfort at having to strip naked in front of the opposite sex, to the point where they devised their own informal schedule to make sure that boys and girls could shower separately. 

The results of the police investigation will hopefully reveal the extent of the inappropriate behaviour at the camp. And clearly, there has been an unimaginable lapse in safeguarding here by the adults in charge. But this is also the tragic, and logical, conclusion of trans ideology. When trans activists say they believe that children can meaningfully ‘consent’ to redefining their sex and even to medically transitioning, these are the kinds of situations that lead to. It follows from there that children must be able to also ‘consent’ to mixed-sex showers, sexualised ‘body-positivity’ exercises, and intimate conversations with adults about their sexual identities. 

An adult man deciding to wear a dress and calling himself Barbara is one thing. But remaking children’s spaces around that belief is something else entirely. No grown-up who sincerely believes that children can be trans should be allowed anywhere near minors. Especially not if they publicly boast about wanting to indoctrinate children into being queer. Children are not canvases for adult fantasies. We need to keep trans ideology as far away from childhood as physically possible.