Views from the City: Orgullo 2009

First and foremost, happy 4th of July to everyone back at home! Although my 4th of July festivities were centered on another major event here in Madrid that will form the subject of this post. Madrid, like many other Western European capitals, has a vibrant gay scene that serves as a source of community for GLBT individuals and a launching pad for activism over their rights. As an GLBT ally, most of my observations of this community have emerged from my GLBT friends who hang out in the city's gay district, Chueca, as well as the work of my adviser on equality and human rights issues in Spain. Given that I have been mostly focused on the issues of immigrant rights within my volunteer work and research, however, my direct experiences with this community and its efforts to solidify their rights in Spain has been limited.

Fortunately, this past weekend marked the annual gay pride week - Orgullo 2009 - that gave me a chance to attend the city's gay pride parade, the largest in all of Europe. The Parade, which is the climax of the week's festivities in Chueca and other parts of Madrid, is considered the largest outdoor party in Europe after beating out beat out the Berlin Love Parade for that distinction. Having attended the gay pride parade in DC, I was expecting a fun, boisterous event that engaged the audience in minor ways. I clearly underestimate the scope and scale of the event.


Part protest, part carnival, and all spectacle, the Parade went through the heart of Madrid -- from the Puerta de Alcala through Grand Vía before finally ending at Plaza de España -- and laid waste to my conceptions of parades and outdoor festivals. With people drinking and dancing in the streets to the beats blasting out of huge trucks and buses -- included some buses sponsored by Spanish leftist political parties and the nation's two major labor unions -- the parade crept along the streets of downtown Madrid in a spectacular fashion as the decorations and the sheer locura of each bus and float topped each other off. The sheer number of people watching the parade was staggering; the only other time I've seen the city that full was on Noche Vieja, New Year's Eve and that could not compare with the sight of looking down Grand Vía to see masses of people flooding the streets and plazas of the city, cheering on the individuals and performers on the floats and buses.



Of course, the parade had its more sober aspects as well. The theme of the parade was Escuelas Sin Armarios - Schools without Closets - and advocated for the rights of GLBT teachers in Spain. Numerous NGOs that support gay rights spearheaded this component of the parade marched first before the party floats, especially those organizations formed by GLBT teachers as well as organizations that centere on one particular aspect of the struggle for GLBT rights (e.g various lesbian organizations, groups that supported gay families, etc). Throughout this section of the parade one could see the flags of the 17 Communidades Autonomas that represented the unified effort of all Spaniards and non-Spaniards in the efforts to solidify the rights of GLBT individuals throughout all of Spain.


The subject of gay rights in Spain has been a point of friction these recent years. Although the rights of GLBT individuals essentially remained within the boundaries of the Spanish Constitution (freedom of privacy, for instance), the government of Jose Luis Zapatero, took the steps to introduce legislation after the PSOE defeated the PP in 2004 to legalize gay marriage in 2005. That year, the Congreso de Diputados, which was dominated by center left parties, approved Ley 13/2005, de 1 de julio, por la que se modifica el Código Civil en materia de derecho a contraer matrimonio, after overriding the vote in Senate, where center right parties had a plurality, and made Spain the third nations on Earth to recognize same sex marriages and grant these unions the same privileges and benefits as heterosexual couples. (As someone who is studying immigration, I should note that this law recognizes marriage between Spanish nationals and third country/non EU citizens in Spain despite the fact that most countries do not recognize or ban same sex marriage.)


Despite the fact that nearly 66% percent of Spaniards approved of the law before it was introduced into effect (and 61% approved of the law after the fact), however, the Catholic Church and the political right in the country have mobilized against these legislative efforts to recognize same sex marriage and adoption of children. At the social level, it is hard for me to communicate whether Spaniards support gay rights in practice; it appears to me that they are tolerant of GLBT individuals. As one of my friends noted at the parade, however, it did not seem that there were many GLBT families that were participating in the parade compared to the Pride Parade in Brooklyn, New York. The fact that this observation may reflect some sectors of Spanish society's ambivalent feelings about the growing presence of GLBT life in Spain that influences the decisions of GLBT couples remains unclear. The observation does demonstrate the fact that many GLBT couples are beginning to establish their lives within a legal context that will continue to change perceptions and attitudes over the nature of human rights within Spain.

More information is available at the wikipedia page about the topic, including the statistics regarding support for same sex marriage.