“Conflict” and “abuse” are two very common concepts. Both are often discussed on the table. Laura Macaya compiled them in the title of her brochure in 2023, published in Catalan by the Valencian publisher Caliu in 2024 and published these days in Basque by Katakrake. Amaia Astobiza has done the translation and Itziar Ziga has written her own preface.

Macaya is a feminist activist. It designs methodologies for accompaniment and develops public policies to address gender-based violence from an intersectional perspective and from the perspective of restorative justice. In the book he works on a topic that he knows up close: among other things, he works with sexual workers who have been harassed.

It is the first work of the author to be translated into Basque, and it is a “political text of dissemination”, explains the editor of Katakrake, Nerea Fillat. What is the purpose of this book? “To intervene in the dialogues that are on the table and to challenge and encourage reflection on the culture of punishment focused on the liberation of women.”

According to Astobiza, the publication allows us to approach the debates that are taking place in the Basque Country in feminism from another place. It opens its doors to talk about “communicative dysfunctionality”, to problematize “the penal system that makes the most vulnerable people in society even more vulnerable”, to “reflect on violence” and to think about “the harm and impact of the chancellery on the community”.

Itziar Ziga asks in the prologue: “Where is restorative justice, a transformative feminist force? Why is sexual violence considered the greatest oppression of women, and not racism, labor exploitation, poverty, exclusion or many of these and other forms of violence at the same time?”

Fillat mentioned that the book of Macaya and Hamaca is related to several other books that Katakrake has brought so far: both Juno Mac and Molly Smith’s Dirty Slut (which was brought by Amaia Astobiza herself and the book was attacked by a TERF group in Bayonne), as well as the recent abolition of the Angela Davis movement for the disappearance of prisons. Politics, practices, promises (translated by Amaia Apalauza).