A politician with Down syndrome was elected to the Spanish Parliament (5 photos)

Mar Galseran hopes that her presence in parliament will help change prejudices against people with the condition.





46-year-old Mar Galceran is the first deputy in Spanish history with Down syndrome. At the age of 18, Mar joined the conservative People's Party and began to pursue a career. She wanted to draw the attention of the authorities to the problems of people with her diagnosis, but it turned out that she herself became famous.



She worked as a civil servant for more than 20 years, rising from a junior specialist to a leading manager, and then even took the post of Deputy Minister of Health of Valencia. For four years, Galceran was the head of Asindown, a Valencian organization dedicated to helping families with children with Down syndrome.



And now the Spaniards have elected the “special” Galceran to the local parliament. The woman states that she wants to be seen “as a person and not because of her disability.” Although the politician understands that there are people who believe that a person with such a genetic anomaly is not capable of being a member of parliament.

“But these are people who don’t know me,” says Galceran. “Society is beginning to see that people with Down syndrome can make a big contribution. But it’s a very long way to go.”



There are not many examples of people with Down syndrome achieving such success in their careers. And all of them, as a rule, happened in the last 10 years. In 2020, Eleanor Laloux became the first person with a genetic condition in France to be elected to public office (city councilor of the northern city of Arras). And seven years earlier, in 2013, Angela Bachiyer became the first city councilor with Down syndrome in Valladolid (Spain). However, neither Lalu nor Bachiyer managed to get into the country's parliament.

Let us remember that Down syndrome is a genetic disease. In 95% of patients with diabetes, chromosome 21 is tripled. Normally, a person has 23 pairs or 46 chromosomes, but with Down syndrome there is a triple amount of the 21st chromosome instead of the required two. This is one of the most common genetic pathologies, which is called standard trisomy. People with this pathology have a characteristic appearance, and in childhood they develop worse and slower than ordinary children, and get sick more often.



The other two variants of Down syndrome are less common. With translocation trisomy, one of the chromosomes of pair 21 or a piece of it is torn off and attached to another pair of chromosomes. Usually by 13, 14, 21 or 22. In children with this form of pathology, the external features of the syndrome are often blurred, so they are not diagnosed immediately. In terms of physical and mental development, such children have a slightly slower pace.

The third type of Down syndrome is mosaic trisomy. This is the rarest form of diabetes, which occurs in 2% of cases of this pathology. Some cells in patients with mosaic trisomy have a normal genetic makeup, and some have a pathological set. This type of diabetes is detected later than others, because the physical development of such children may fit within age norms. In addition, the babies do not have severe developmental defects and look normal in appearance.