Everyone in Puerta del Ángel seems to know Jero Garcia. They greet him on the street and enter and leave his boxing school with the comfort of someone who knows a place well. The gym has been, for almost 20 years, its center of operations. Not only does he train, his fight against the virus also emerges from there. school bullying, a battle that she has been fighting for decades and that has made her a leading activist on the subject. She does it, furthermore, from the experience of having lived the bullying very close. But from the other side. He himself was an aggressor when he was just a kid. He was without even being aware of it. Not until many years later he came face to face with reality: the person who had been the target of his attacks at school.
The former Spanish boxing champion in 1999 receives 20 minutes in his school, a place in Madrid that welcomes with a graffiti that reads ‘Sport vs. Bullying’, one of the multiple campaigns that he has led in recent years. He does it on the occasion of International Day Against Bullying, this May 2, and to claim the importance of raising awareness and educating against violence that, he says, has become crueller over the years. “The best way to avoid any type of violence is education. For children, but also for parents,” she maintains.
What happens, says García, is that in many cases it is the socioeconomic context that conditions the behavior of children with their peers. He himself assures that as a child he was “a devilish, rebellious little junk, bordering on juvenile delinquency.” It was the eighties when he was growing up in Carabanchel, a very conflictive area at the time and in which several entities got involved to prevent the exclusion of young people. “I was one of the first to be involved in those projects, and That burden of solidarity that they had with me stayed in me“, he affirms. The channel that he found to be that agent of change was sport, because, he assures, it is what transformed his life.
“I was diagnosed with ADHD late, and I saw that when I played sports my demons calmed down. I believe that there is no better vehicle for positively transforming personalities, especially young people, than sport,” he defends. That is why he decided to create the Foundation to Help Integration Through Sport, which over the years and after gaining popularity for His time on the television program ‘Big Brother’ was renamed after him, the Jero García Foundation. The first campaign that the foundation did was, precisely, ‘Sport vs Bullying’, a boxing evening with professionals. They changed their usual nicknames for the insults that children usually receive at school.
“Two weeks later I received a message on social media. It was Antonio, an old school classmate of mine who I didn’t even remember. He told me that he wanted to talk to me and two weeks later he appeared at the gym door,” says García. The boxer took him to Bar Mauricio – his “office”, as he calls it with a laugh – where they were reminiscing about his childhood stories. “And then he goes and tells me: ‘Look, Jero, I came here to tell you two things. First, thank you for everything you are doing against bullying. And, second, that I forgive you’. “I didn’t understand what I had to forgive,” he explains to this newspaper.
It was then that Antonio told him that in the last year of EGB, in the eighth grade, there was a group of boys who constantly bothered him, and one in particular, with special zeal. “One dark-skinned, with blue eyes. Apparently they had him completely frightened, and the poor thing came to think that he was a zero on the left. He entered a climate of helplessness and began to have suicidal ideas. Not only that, he climbed to the fifth floor and tried to jump. That dark-haired boy with blue eyes was me. “I was stunned,” she admits.
“People look, but many times they don’t see”
García hugged him and asked for forgiveness once, twice and even three times. “I was thinking about how she could have been so hypocritical. I had started to prevent the bullying without me knowing that he had been a stalker,” he says. For the boxer, one of the reasons why he was not aware of what he was doing is the ignorance and passivity of his surroundings. “If they had seen me, they would have braking. People look, but often they don’t see. And a child when he is alone is very dangerous. Someone should have noticed. My parents loved me very much, but they were looking the other way. Neither my teachers nor my coaches saw it. That’s why I advocate training for parents and teachers,” she defends.
Two victims per classroom
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According to research by the Complutense University of Madrid and the ColaCao Foundation, from 4th grade of Primary to 4th grade of ESO, there are 6.2% of students who recognize themselves as victims of bullying after having read what it consists of; 2.1% identify as stalkers; and 16.3% as witnesses. And the torture does not always end when they leave the center: almost half of the victims say they have also suffered some form of cyberbullying.
Although awareness about bullying has grown in recent years, for Jero García, what happens is that the cases are more serious than before. “There is a fundamental fact, and that is that half of the children who suffer bullying at school later suffer cyberbullying. With that alone there is 50% more bullying than a few years ago. It’s 24 hours. There is much more cruelty now, because with cyberbullying you do not empathize with the damage you commit and you don’t know how to stop. They are more dehumanized,” she maintains.
Beyond training, García also considers it crucial to promote a law that establishes harsher punishments for harassment. “Without a sanctioning agent there are no consequences,” he defends. “What cannot be,” he adds, “is that children under 14 years of age cannot be charged and commit crimes. So, if they are not responsible, then the responsibility should fall on the person in charge of educating them, who are the parents. When they begin to charge, both civilly and criminally, parents for the harm they commit to their childrenwe will see how many who do not look now will look and see,” he says.
“Schools that really care about bullying should be rewarded”
Schools also play a fundamental role, although the activist believes that there are still many schools that are afraid to report or report cases of bullying. “I think that the administration should reward schools that really care about bullying. I have found many cases that avoid reporting so as not to have to activate the protocol. There are many that also talk about conflict instead of bullying, when “The difference between one and the other is the recurrence over time.”.
Jero García says that he regrets “every day” the damage he committed at the time. But he, he assures, would not have reached where he has reached nor would he have helped all the people he has been able to help if it had not been for what he experienced. I don’t even book it from him, lizard tail (Today’s Topics), would have existed. Published just a few months ago, the novel, half autobiographical, narrates the life of a bully from the prism of how society turns its back on children who feel different or who have it more complicated. “It has served as therapy for me,” he concludes.
