•
1901 - The
first same-sex marriage in Spain took place between two women, Marcela Gracia Ibeas and Elisa Sanchez Loriga, when Elisa dressed as a man. The wedding was performed, and while the priest who blessed the marriage later denounced it when made aware of the deception, the certification of the marriage was never annulled. •
1931 - A group of
transvestites from Barcelona, known as "Las Carolinas", carries out the first documented LGBT demonstration in history. They do so after the destruction of a centric
public bath of
Barcelona which was a common LGBT meeting place at the time.
Franco era Homosexuality was highly illegal under the dictatorship of
Francisco Franco, with laws against homosexual activity vigorously enforced and homosexual people being imprisoned in large numbers. The 1954 reform of the 1933 "Ley de vagos y maleantes" ("Vagrancy Act") declared homosexuality illegal, equating it with
procuring. The text of the law declares that the measures in it "are not proper punishments, but mere security measures, set with a doubly preventive end, with the purpose of collective guarantee and the aspiration of correcting those subjects fallen to the lowest levels of morality. This law is not intended to punish, but to correct and reform". However, the way the law was applied was clearly punitive and arbitrary: police would often use the Vagrancy laws against suspected political dissenters, using their homosexuality as a way to go around the judicial guarantees. The law was repealed in 1979. However, in other cases the harassment of gay, lesbian and transgender people was clearly directed at their sexual mores, and homosexuals (mostly males) were sent to special prisons called "galerías de invertidos" ("galleries of deviants"). This was a common practice until 1975, when Franco's regime gave way to the current constitutional democracy, but in the early 70s gay prisoners were overlooked by political activism in favour of more "traditional" political dissenters. Some gay activists deplore the fact that, even today, reparations have not been made. However, in the 1960s clandestine gay scenes began to emerge in Spain. Further establishments would start to appear in
Barcelona, an especially tolerant city under Franco's regime, and in the
countercultural centers of
Ibiza and
Sitges (a town in the province of Barcelona,
Catalonia, that remains a highly popular gay tourist destination). Attitudes in greater Spain began to change with the return to democracy after Franco's death through a cultural movement known as
La movida. This movement, along with growth of the
gay rights movement in the rest of Europe and the Western world was a large factor in making Spain today one of Europe's most socially tolerant people.
Post-Franco •
1977 -
Spain's first gay pride demonstration is held in Barcelona, and is violently repressed by police. •
1979 - Spain decriminalizes homosexuality as part of several post-
Franco reforms; the Madrid Gay Pride Parade, known as "Orgullo Gay", is first held in June that year. •
1987 - Antonia Soria Ramirez is the first transgender person to receive a name and gender change in the Civil Register. •
1991 -
Murder of Sonia Rescalvo Zafra in
Barcelona. Became the first transgender hate crime in Spain in which
neo-Nazi skinheads attacked her while sleeping in the street. Considered a "turning point" in the
Trans rights movement in
Catalonia. •
1998 -
Zero magazine is first published. •
1999 -
Miquel Iceta of
PSC becomes the first openly LGBT member of a Regional Parliament in Spain (
that of Catalonia). ==21st century==