A sensory journey through various audiovisual pieces, typically lasting up to 60 seconds, each one concealing a direct and unmistakable message. It is a demanding experience. Mabel Lozano leads the workshop titled ‘Put yourself in their shoes,’ a writer, model, actress, and television presenter who has dedicated years to social change. The focus is on sexual exploitation through prostitution and trafficking of women.
Over two days, Lozano reached around 600 students from Santa Maria, Isidor Macabich, Quartó del Rei, Sa Blanca Dona, and Balàfia. The session took place at the Jesús Cultural Center as part of the 25N events organized by Consell de Ibiza in collaboration with the Dona Office and the Center d’Estudi i Prevenció de Conductes Addictives (Cecca).
At the start of each day, which runs a little over 90 minutes, there is chat and light banter from the stands, with curious looks from teachers and quiet laughs. Then a hush falls as Lozano continues her talk and the room watches a trailer from her documentary Biografía del kadaver de una mujer. The film, which won the Goya Award for Best Documentary Short Film in 2021, anchors the discussion with a stark reality.
The tragic story of Yamilde
The son of Colombian woman Yamilde Giraldo recounts the moment, the day, and the seconds after six shots were fired at his mother in Navarra in 2009. The gun jammed before death, saving his life. Yamilde’s story tracks her arrival in Spain, where testimony from her son and the Civil Guard indicates she was sold into a pimp network and transported to a Navarra brothel. After escaping the hell, her pimp organized her murder through hired killers while he was in prison.
“Yamilde was not a prostitute, she was a woman who was prostituted,” Lozano explains to a stunned audience as the audiovisual piece unfolds.
New videos from the Put yourself in their shoes campaign follow: TikTok creator Mar Lucas details how a young woman was recruited through social networks to participate in seemingly harmless videos; another account shows a Nigerian minor lured to Spain via gifts online and forced into prostitution; a young boy dreams of becoming a football player yet faces a resource-poor environment, and a football scout misleads a girl, leading to coercion into sex work. These clips portray real-life cases of youth in deprived settings who become victims of sexual abuse.
Lozano is clear about the risk: on social networks there are no safeties—just you against the void. On the internet even the dangerous look appealing. The message to minors is explicit: social networks open the door for predators and pimps, making it easier for them to act.
There is a direct appeal to refrain from sending photos to anyone. Lozano urges, “This isn’t affection; it’s foolish. Do not share photos because a partner may love you now but could use them against you later.” The speaker highlights that freedom can become an excuse for predators if a video falls into the wrong hands.
The discussion then shifts to pornography. Lozano includes a video with a straightforward premise: “Porn is the junk food of sex.” Afterward, she issues a pointed reminder, saying pornography is misogynistic, coercive, and a breeding ground for domination—factors that help trafficking and misogyny prevail.
Porn as a school
The audience is asked how many have discussed sex with their parents; shockingly, only five in a hundred raise a hand. Lozano adds that easy access to porn blurs lines about sexuality, making it feel like a school for sex. The message is clear: porn’s grip is real, and it has to be analyzed critically.
Lozano notes that porn can trigger addictive patterns through dopamine, equating its pull to the kind of dopamine-driven cycles seen with other addictions. She calls on students to consider the broader costs, including the data used when accessing such material.
Sexual relations should emerge from desire and be built on equality and mutual respect. The speaker emphasizes empathy, urging young people to invest in healthy, communicative relationships rather than coercion and imposition. What is driven by genuine connection becomes a shared, consensual experience.
The herd effect
The final audiovisual piece centers on a boy describing a group assault by several girls. This is a controversial and unsettling narrative meant to spark discussion about collective violence. Recent years have seen more than 210 cases of groups of men forcing women into prostitution reach court.
Lozano notes that in the most explicit pornographies, the acts are recorded for sharing, labeling the perpetrators as “idiots” and “imbecles” while the underlying effect is normalization of such behavior. The goal is to reveal how porn normalizes harm and exploitation.
The workshop aims to open the eyes of young people living in comfortable, sometimes sheltered environments to the harsher realities of life, including aggressively explicit pornography, trafficking, and exploitation. Lozano describes a prevention and information framework where knowledge equips young people to act wisely, but only after processing these insights. The session closes with several students asking for a souvenir photo with Lozano, a small sign that understanding can take root.