That the phrase that Belén Cuesta’s character says after a long monologue about her sexuality in Kiki, el amor se hace: “Madrid seems very modern, but Madrid is not modern” is one of the most remembered things of the film and has flirted with virality on TikTok is not strange. It is enough to have lived here for a while to know that Madrid is a city of contrasts, of highs and lows and that just as it has been a refuge for the LGTBIQ+ community for decades, it is also the place where 1 in 4 people have suffered harassment, verbal threats or insults in public spaces because of their sexual orientation in the last 5 years according to this study conducted by the Madrid City Council in 2021 on the LGTBIQ+ collective. The data reflect that, although in general the majority find Madrid a friendly city, 55.9% of those surveyed believe that intolerance towards people of the collective has remained the same or has increased in recent years.
In this encounter between the LGTBI community and Madrid, the real winners have been the citizens. A clear and obvious example is the transformation that the neighborhood of Chueca has undergone from the 80’s until now, going from being a place to run away from to one of the most attractive neighborhoods and a reference for the collective in the city.
Certain parts of the city are now important enclaves of the change that society and Madrid have undergone to the point of being in the top 10 of the most accepted cities in the world.
La Bobia Bar
La Bobia was a meeting point for artists in the 80s. This is where Fabio McNamara and Pedro Almodóvar met, and soon after they started their music group in which the now renowned film director would dress up for concerts -in fact, another great meeting point was the Rock-Ola room where it was common for them to play-. La Bobia is one of the settings of Laberinto de Pasiones ( 1982), Pedro Almodóvar’s second film, in which the homosexuality of the protagonist is openly discussed.
Berkana
Berkana is an icon of Chueca, and a pilgrimage bookstore for anyone interested in the LGTBI collective. Berkana is where the first gay flag flew in Chueca and its owner, Mili Hernández, is one of the pioneers of LGTBIQ+ activism in Spain. She opened the bookstore after years living in London and New York, where there were already recognized bookstores with this theme and upon her return to Madrid she missed such a space, so she opened it herself. She also participated in the first Pride demonstrations in Madrid.
La Veneno’s plaque
“In memory of Cristina Ortiz La Veneno, brave transsexual woman visible in the 90s” reads the plaque that was placed in the Parque del Oeste in 2019, shortly before a series based on her life was made. The second plaque honoring a trans person is on a pillar next to the park’s Juan de Villanueva Fountain. Since the premiere of the series, the pillar began to be wrapped in flowers and objects of support, until it disappeared for a year. It has also been vandalized on different occasions, one of them in protest of the Trans Law.
La Veneno became an icon of the collective for her appearances on television, making visible for the first time to the mass public the reality of a trans person in Spain.
Plaza de la Memoria Trans
Slightly less known is the first plaque dedicated to the memory of trans people that is between the streets San Gregorio with San Lucas. It was initially approved in 2017 to name it after Alan Montoliu Albert, a trans teenager who committed suicide in 2015 because of the bullying he received. Finally, this small square in Chueca, which previously had no name, went on to “become a place of vindication of LGTBI rights in our city. A collective that still, to this day, suffers aggressions and is a victim of hatred and intolerance” as the communiqué of the City Council said in 2018.
Pedro Zerolo’s square
Pedro Zerolo Square was renamed after the politician and LGTBIQ+ rights activist in 2015. Zerolo presided over the State Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals between the years 1998-2003, later becoming a councilman of the Socialist Municipal Group in Madrid and one of the great promoters of the same-sex marriage law, which is finally approved on July 3, 2005. He then went on to hold other positions within the PSOE as a member of the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of Madrid.
Born in Venezuela, his fight for the rights of the collective crossed borders and was also very influential in Latin America.
The streets of the first Madrid Pride
Almost 10 years after the Stonewall incidents in New York -considered the first protest in favor of LGTBI rights- some 7,000 people -according to MADO data- participated in what would be the first Pride demonstration held in Madrid, which went from Plaza de Santo Domingo to Sol. A year later the demonstration was not authorized and was reduced to a rally in Casa de Campo. In 1979 it was held in Paseo de Pintor Rosales and it was not until 1986 when it was established in Chueca, with the creation of the Collective of Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals of Madrid (COGAM).
At first they were very vindictive and political demonstrations that were far from the festive idea that is today, in fact, the first float that walked through the Pride was that of Shangay magazine in 1996. Now, the Critical Pride has been since 2018 recovering the spirit of the first demonstrations.
The Lavapiés of Gloria Fuertes
Gloria Fuertes is the author with whom the children of this country are initiated in poetry -no small commendation for her work- but, in her rawest poems she speaks of her neighborhood, Lavapiés. As one of the phrases attributed to her when she lived in the U.S. says: “I am so cool that when I say yes, everyone notices that I am from Lavapiés”.
Now a plaque remembers her on the street where the feminist and lesbian poet, who did not become an icon, despite her exceptionality, until the 1980s, was born.