LGTBIQ+ Pride Day: Madrid loves you

There are cities that seem to have been refuges for people who had nowhere else to go. In Madrid It is said that since everyone is an outsider, after all we are a little from here in our way.

See photos: proud paintings

However true this reputation may be for Madrid’s hospitality, move to the capital It is a fantasy of freedom that repeats itself over and over again, especially among humans queer Born in less friendly places. Perhaps that is why, after the end of Franco’s dictatorship, it took so little time turn on the wick of LGTBIQ+ activism.

Now that Madrid boasts one of the most important Pride in Europe (which has eclipsed even the feasts of the patron saint), with activities this cover the entire month of June and part of it July and such mass participation in demonstrations organized even by neighborhoods, it seems as if it has always been this way. But the critical mass he has achieved the whole city is dressed in rainbows every summer It has been cultivated since those early gatherings in the late 70s and early 80s amid insults and confrontations with law enforcement and fascist groups. It has been created in the everyday life of the neighborhoods, and not only to Chueka, which has taken almost all the fame. Madrid It’s full of communities which have been formed just like this: with low rents that allow minority groups to open their businesses, live and form support networks.

Some areas attract so much interest that they eventually become inaccessible and the process starts again (from Chueca to La Latina, from there to Lavapiésfrom Lavapiés to Vallecas and adds and continues), and in this cycle, LGTBI is inextricably intertwined. You will see it everywhere: in culture (with specialized bookstores, art and shows which are not limited to summer). inside this free time (as evidenced by its dozens of groups and associations ranging from book clubs until hiking groups) in other activism (it was always inevitably connected with the feminist struggle and has an increasingly large presence bivalent) and in fact in places as traditionally hostile as the sport (with two groups of roller derbyan activity that began as a movement of empowerment of women queer).