3. Sisterhood: On Fighting Wolfpacks and Machirulos

This chapter examines feminist listening as political action through two defining events in contemporary Spain: the 2016 La Manada gang rape case and the 2023 non-consensual kiss involving footballer Jenni Hermoso. Despite legal setbacks and media distortion, both incidents sparked sustained feminist mobilisation, showing that gendered life stories gain political force not only in their telling but through their circulation in acts of feminist sisterhood. The chapter develops the concept of a “pedagogy of listening” to describe the relational practice that enables testimony to move beyond the private realm and intervene in public discourse. Focusing on collective responses—from mass protests to digital campaigns such as #Cuéntalo and #SeAcabó, and the legal reforms they helped propel—the chapter shows how feminist listening transforms testimony from an individual act into a shared political project. In these moments, acts of sororidad (sisterhood) sustain the story’s momentum and resist the institutional and media narratives that seek to contain it. The cases demonstrate that life stories shaped by violence do not simply enter public discourse, they can reconfigure the very conditions under which women’s voices are heard and taken seriously.