The Spanish Gay and Lesbian Movement in Comparative

Instituto Juan March Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Ciencias Sociales (CEACS) Juan March Institute Center for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences (CEACS) Pursuing membership in the polity : the Spanish gay and lesbian movement in comparative perspective, 1970-1997 Author(s): Calvo, Kerman Year: 2005 Type Thesis (doctoral) University: Instituto Juan March de Estudios e Investigaciones, Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Ciencias Sociales, University of Essex, 2004. City: Madrid Number of pages: ix, 298 p. Abstract: El título de la tesis de Kerman Calvo Borobia es Pursuing membership in the polity: the Spanish gay and lesbian movement in comparative perspective, (1970–1997). Lo que el estudio aborda es por qué determinados movimientos sociales varían sus estrategias ante la participación institucional. Es decir, por qué pasan de rechazar la actuación dentro del sistema político a aceptarlo. ¿Depende ello del contexto político y de cambios sociales? ¿Depende de razones debidas al propio movimiento? La explicación principal radica en las percepciones políticas y los mapas intelectuales de los activistas, en las variaciones de estas percepciones a lo largo del tiempo según distintas experiencias de socialización. Atribuye por el contrario menor importancia a las oportunidades políticas, a factores exógenos al propio movimiento, al explicar los cambios en las estrategias de éste. La tesis analiza la evolución en el movimiento de gays y de lesbianas en España desde una perspectiva comparada, a partir de su nacimiento en los años 70 hasta final del siglo, con un importante cambio hacia una estrategia de incorporación institucional a finales de los años 80. La tesis fue dirigida por la profesora Yasemin Soysal, miembro del Consejo Científico, y fue defendida en la Universidad de Essex. Your use of the CEACS Repository indicates your acceptance of individual author and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any document(s) only for academic research and teaching purposes. CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION. RESEARCH PROBLEMATIC, STRATEGY AND METHODOLOGY On a pleasant night of June 1969, the crowd of the Stonewall Inn, no more than a small battalion of “transvestites, faggots and chicken hawks” (Marotta, 1981) got furious. That night, the anti- vice squad of the police department of New York City raided the bar. Such a thing was hardly surprising: the homosexual commercial subcultures of all major American cities had been regularly harassed by law enforcement agencies since the beginning of the 1950s. On that particular night, however, homosexuals fought back. In an unprecedented reaction, they decided to put a halt to decades of abuse, violence and stigmatisation. The so-called “Stonewall Riots”, three days of unrest and confrontations between the homosexual community and the New York police, are commonly seen as the symbolic birth of the contemporary gay and lesbian movement. In the immediate aftermath of the riots, “Homosexual liberation fronts” (GLFs) were organised in virtually every large urban area in the United States first, and in Canada, Great Britain and Australia afterwards. French homosexuals also reacted to the wave of homosexual liberation that originated in the United States. Although a degree of homosexual insurgency had formed part of the wave of revolutionary protest of 1968, the symbolism around “gay power”, “homosexual liberation” and “coming out” was determinant for 2 / Pursuing membership in the polity the crystallization of a truly homosexual liberation movement in France. At the very moment that the youngest and most active elements of the homosexual population of France, the United States, Germany or Canada were demanding visibility, pride and sexual freedom, in Barcelona two lawyers were drafting a letter to be sent to every member of the Francoist Legislative Assembly. Francoist authorities had been considering for a while the need to tighten the grip on homosexuals. Out of these deliberations, the so-called Social Menaces and Rehabilitation Act of 1970, a fiercely anti-homosexual text that reified the conceptualisation of homosexuality as an anti-social, dangerous activity, was sent for approval to that legislative assembly. Writing letters to Francoist authorities was not at all a risk-free decision at the time, particularly when the letter included a critique of the regime: Spain was lingering under the rule of a dictator who had severed off Spanish society from the trains of modernity, human rights and collective happiness. These lawyers, who operated under the nicknames of Mir Bellgai and Roger de Gaimon, felt however that something needed to be done. Close contact with some European organisations, notably the French group Arcadie had lead them to understand that a new blueprint for the definition of the relationship between homosexuals and heterosexuals was on the making. Notwithstanding the risks, they felt obliged to employ the limited weapons they had at hand – anonymous letters full of technical discussions - to react against what they considered an “enormous atrocity that would culminate in the genocidal anti- homosexual project of the dictatorship”.1 So, while Western societies were being exposed to a prideful understanding of sexual diversity, in Spain, the lack of basic 1 Armand de Fluvià, interview nº 3. Introduction / 3 freedoms and liberties together with a well-entrenched homophobia, social and institutional, was making life a very difficult pursuit for the homosexual population. In 1975, however, the dictator died. Almost immediately, a process of regime change began that, by 1978, had resulted in a widely praised democratic Constitution. The Spanish homosexual liberation movement was born amidst the democratic euphoria of those transition years. Between 1975 and 1978 a distinct type of organisation, the so- called “Homosexual Liberation Fronts”, was born in Barcelona first, and in other parts of the country afterwards. As they expanded and consolidated, these organizations gave birth to a social movement committed to political activity and visibility. As a result, homosexual political demonstrations were organised, for the first time ever, in Barcelona, Madrid, Bilbao or Valencia. Also, a campaign against the Social Menaces Act was launched, which stands as the first ever collective campaign on behalf of homosexual law reform. Even an ephemeral gay film festival was organised in Seville, one of the most conservative cities in the country. The first wave of gay and lesbian activism in Spain steered the formation of revolutionary organisations. As had happened in nearby France, an undisguised interweaving between the ideas of sexual liberation and Marxism nurtured discourses and proposals of action that, among other things, aimed to implement a socialist economic system along with a host of similar revolutionary initiatives (including the end of the armed forces or the institution of marriage). These founding organisations were, in many ways, less preoccupied with sexual revolution and more engaged with Marxist politics. Of course, such a revolutionary political consciousness had it’s bearing on the interaction with power: in a notorious rupture with the dominant political ethos, the Spanish homosexual liberation movement criticised the Constitution and criticised the strategy of pacts that governed the transition process as limited and undemocratic. Ultimately, homosexual liberation organisations defined themselves as outsiders in the context of the nascent democratic polity. Neither measurable policy influence, 4 / Pursuing membership in the polity nor respectability was valuable aspirations for this new social movement. The longevity of the phase of homosexual liberation is a very peculiar aspect of the Spanish case. Whereas elsewhere in western countries homosexual liberation was a very short-lived phenomenon -not perhaps in the terrain of ideas, but definitely so in the terrain of organisations- Spanish revolutionary homosexual liberation fronts remained as the sole claimants on behalf of the homosexual population until 1986. Even more strikingly, the veteran liberationist groups of the 1970s continued to exist until the beginning of the 1990s, which sets the Spanish case completely apart in comparisons with any other western country. In the United Kingdom, for instance, the pioneering London-based GLF, which was founded in 1971, died out in less than three years. This kind of “cultural autarky”, however, did not last forever and during the late part of the 1980s, a new conception of gay and lesbian activism was already on the making. New organisations, which in my view represent the genesis of a “pragmatic” understanding of activism -as opposed to the previous “utopian” type- started to talk about gay and lesbian communities and gay and lesbian rights. Whereas the pioneering homosexual liberation fronts had battled for the dismantlement of the so-called homosexual ghettos, the nascent “gay and lesbian rights organisations” defined the commercial “scene” as a space of freedom and community interaction. And while liberationist activists had framed the quest of sexual liberation as yet another part of the grander goal of a socialist revolution, the incoming gay and lesbian activists rejected to engage in any battle out of the quest for the recognition of equal rights for gays and lesbians. In short, what I will refer in the thesis as “pragmatic activism” introduced a new blueprint for the definition, and organisation, of collective action on behalf of gay and

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