The Queer Perspective in Spanish Culture

Mexico City recently legalized same-sex marriage and adoption. Buenos Aires just licensed its first gay marriages as well. But the pioneering country of the Spanish-speaking world is Spain, a country that legalized queer marriages in 2005. The death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975 brought Spain out from behind a heavy, fascist curtain of repression and isolation where even the train tracks had been built to different dimensions than those in the rest of Europe.

Franco's death brought forth a culture renaissance known as La Movida Madrilena, (the Madrid Movement), a politically and socially progressive blossoming of art and culture that continues today. This book, "Queer Transitions in Contemporary Spanish Culture: From Franco to La Movida," sheds light on ongoing democratic transition of Spain from a queer perspective. Gema Perez-Sanchez begins with the dangerous and self-loathing homosexual of the Franco years, through the literary blossoming of the eighties onward through the early years of the 21st century. She analyzes films, periodicals and comic books along with works of literary fiction.

Here is some more information on La Movida. And click here for the moving speech by the Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, delivered in 2005 marking the end of discriminatory marriage laws.