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Bloodthirsty, amoral. An experimental laboratory. A butcher's shop. Clandestine deaths. Disqualified by the College of Physicians of France. The halo that precedes Dr. Georges Burou seems to be taken from the main character of Robert Louis Stevenson's novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The Clinique du Parc in Casablanca became in the 60s the sanctum sanctorum for the processes of 'transsexualization'.

While in Tangier the gatherings of Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams and William S. Borrough still resounded at the Café Hafa and the billionaire Barbara Hutton languished drunkenly in her mansion Sidi Hosni in the Kasbah where she ordered one of the entrances to pass her Rolls Royce, in Casablanca a dream world was fulminated in which hundreds of men were trapped dreaming of the possibility of becoming women. . The despair was indescribable. Virtually clandestinely, the specialist received his patients anxious for sex reassignment. In the first two floors of the clinic were the traditional patients, but in the third was located the experimental laboratory that consisted of an operating room and a room in which men were psychologically prepared in the process of transition to women. They were taught to put on makeup and dress, learned to walk like women, and acquired tricks to hide Adam's apple.

Born in 1910, he was the son of a couple of French teachers who moved to Algeria, where Georges graduated in gynecology and obstetrics at the University of Oran to later practice in a hospital in the capital. Their practices were somewhat dubious. The babies she brought into the world were always perfect since she was in charge of eliminating the deformed and fulfilled the dream of many women who found it difficult to get pregnant due to the lack of virility of their husbands. In the early 40s he was forced to leave the country after being removed from the French medical register for performing abortions since they were banned in France and its colonies. In 1975 this practice was decriminalized thanks to the Veil Law.

His professional course changed direction diametrically when in 1956 a stunning 23-year-old woman appeared in his office who turned out to be a sound engineer with perfect breasts achieved by injecting hormones. In a profile drawn by Paris Match magazine two decades later, Dr. Burou confessed that "this person told me his problems with the deep conviction that his body as a child was a tragic accident of nature, irreparable (...) Faced with this new problem for me, I studied the male and female pelvis for several months and made him enter my clinic. The intervention lasted three hours. The patient spent a month convalescing. I had made this person a real woman."

French actress Coccinelle (1931 - 2006) in 1965Getty

The first celebrity to come to him was the actress and vedette Coccinelle in 1958 and the second Dolly van Doll, who was the first Italian to make the change. He says it was 1962 or 1963, "I don't remember it exactly now." From his home in Barcelona he remembers to LOC that "I took a plane from Paris to Casablanca and when I arrived there was no medical preparation, no blood tests, nor did I talk to the doctor. If it went wrong, you disappeared and that's it. I was admitted for 26 days with immense pain, but it was worth it. When I was told that the operation could cost me my life in two years, I preferred that to living the way I had been doing it."

Seller of dreams since her earliest childhood, Dolly created a dream world to suit her when she was the owner in the city of the Belle Époque -current Luz de Gas- where she designed unpublished shows made to measure. Because she was Italian, specifically from Turin, she was aware of the power that the Vatican had, "but I was very lucky. The church even changed my name from male to female. It was in every newspaper in the world."

Of the clinic he affirms that "on the outside it was very beautiful, the rooms had names of flowers and I was touched by violet. People with a lot of money also came to give birth" and Dr. Burou only means that "sometimes he went down to operate in his pajamas, it was an unknown, he was kicked out of several countries for performing abortions, but he was very kind to me. During the time I was hospitalized he poked his head out the door of my room, said some things to me, sometimes touched my face... It's true that I caught a major infection, but I can't complain. I got what I wanted, I've fought a lot in life and I'm happy." Shortly after, the renowned British model and restaurateur April Ashley and Bambi, the music-hall star who was Cocinelle's pupil, were operated. On the latter, Dolly van Doll states that "when I was director of Barcelona de Noche I hired her to act. She was number one in everything. The first who became a monkey by operating on her nose and other parts of her body, the first who got married..." All of them coincided in the nights of Paris in emblematic places such as Madame Arthur or Le Carrousel.

Facing the gallery, Dr. Burou had a reputation as a playboy, he liked to have tanned skin, he had a glamorous rhythm of life, his house was full of service, he liked to sail and practiced water skiing in the nautical center of Mohammedía, a few kilometers from Casablanca. But if you scratched a little, you discovered a person consumed by debts who through some plug in the gear of corruption systems escaped paying taxes, among other perks.

Christine, one of the best-known artists of the show, especially when she performed at the Barcelona de Noche, was the first Spanish to have surgery in our country thanks to the hands of Dr. Sáenz de Cabezón, "a very kind person who was director of the urology department of the Vall d'Hebron hospital and had a private practice in the neighborhood of Sarrià. I went home quite a bit. Her daughter gave me the psychiatric examination." The big change in her life came when sex reassignment surgery was decriminalized in 1981. "It cost me two million pesetas, practically what a flat cost," he concludes. But it was worth it. He is also happy.Eria of the group.

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