August 21, 2022

Last night on my Twitter feed, there were some big discussions about lesbians and feminism in Spain. I can’t really weigh into those debates in Spanish but what I can do is compile a history from various documents I have about lesbians and feminism in Spain. This piece is not very cohesive because what it amounts to is a copy and paste from various documents to give an idea about lesbian involvement in the feminist movement and lesbian feminist movement. Some of the text is repetitive because it hasn’t been written into a narrative, and just relays what a specific source said. It is a starting point for others who wish to discuss this topic more. It is sorted by region because so much history in Spain is local, and is a copy and paste from my by region histories.

Nationally

The seeds of lesbian militancy in the Franco period originated in the feminist and homosexual rights activist communities. [1]

By the early 1970s, women’s associations began to focus on laws that effectively made women eternal legal minors. These early feminist groups asked of their members that they were only feminist militants, and that they did not engage in any double militancy by belonging to political parties.

The feminist movement of the late 1970s was highly influenced by the political situation that followed Franco’s death. A lot of this was about trying to, as a new generation and without an explicit call to it, recapturing the rights women had legally had during the Second Republic that were then stripped by the Franco regime. Francoism had provided very specific models of masculinity and femininity, with the role of women designated as being wife, mother and housewife. Feminists in the transition period had absorbed these views and took them with them into the feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s and then into the post-Franco period.

The feminist movement gained a huge amount of strength in Spain following the death of Franco.

Spanish feminism in the immediate post-Franco period was unified by a common identity and common political goals. Spanish feminists inserted themselves into a number of political topics in support of their goals in this immediate transition period, including seeking legal equality, the Spanish Constitution, repeal of certain laws, divorce, contraceptives, and abortion rights.

During the mid-1970s, lesbianism was rarely a subject of discussion in Francoist Spain feminist groups. This was despite the fact that some of these early feminist groups were lesbians and were open with their sexual orientation inside these groups. Their sexual orientation was not viewed as a political issue, but a choice these women made. This meant it was not viewed as central to the oppression faced by feminist militants; heterosexuality was not questioned.

Spanish feminism in the immediate post-Franco period was unified by a common identity and common political goals.

During the early days in the transition period, some lesbians in the feminist movement were “afraid” of being identified as such. Some of this was because of internalized homophobia and others because some militant feminists did not see their sexual orientation as natural. Despite the fears of individual lesbians and despite organizational opinions about homosexuality in general, Spanish lesbians started carving out their own space in the feminist movement, working on issues like access to contraceptives and abortion rights. At the same time, they also worked on addressing the issue of female sexuality, including the idea that penetrative sex was not necessary.

The Primeras Jornadas Nacionales por la Liberación de la Mujer took place between 6 and 8 December 1975 in Madrid at Colegio Montpellier, with around 500 women participating. The event was constituted in 1974 by the Secretariado de Organizaciones No Gubernamentales, who held meetings and coordinated activities in different parts of Spain including in Barcelona, Valencia, Santander, Malaga, Alicante and Valladolid. Ahead of the December 1975 event, the held a smaller one in Madrid, attended by 80 women from cities and regions that included Albacete, Alicante, Barcelona, Galicia, Logroño, Madrid, Málaga, Oviedo, Santander, Seville, Valencia and Valladolid. These meetings would give rise to the feminist movement in the post-Franco period and be a launching point from which some early lesbian activists would emerge.[2]

During the late 1980s, as the homosexual rights movement began to start mobilizing more towards fighting for AIDS, lesbian feminists made a collective decision to more or less sit out that battle as they did not consider AIDS to be an issue that impacted women, and they did not work on efforts to prevent the transmission of sexually transmitted infections, including AIDS, between women.

By the late 1980s, the feminist movement was beginning to fracture as political goals began to be achieved and new issues became increasingly complex to address. There was also a certain level of disenchantment that had leached into the movement with the new political situation in Spain.

Inside the feminist movement in the early 1980s, there was a phrase sometimes used, “Be careful, being a feminist is not being a lesbian.”[3]

At the same time, Las Jornadas de Granada de 1979 represented a rupture in the feminist movement, a rupture which was also duplicated among lesbians in the movement, and between lesbians and heterosexual feminists. The major goals of the feminist movement had been accomplished, with only abortion rights left to be fulfilled as a unifying element. From this conference, independent and autonomous feminism in Spain would emerge. This autonomous and independent feminist current was taken back local activists to the city, serving as an umbrella term for radical feminists, reformist feminist, separatist feminist, lesbian feminists and a place for individual feminists and feminists who had belonged to political parties. In some cases, the existence of autonomous and independent feminism made it difficult to debate issues in the feminist community and it resulted in a decline in intellectual production.

Only during the 1980s did feminist first begin to question heterosexuality as a system used to reinforce male patriarchy.

Lesbian feminism by the early 1980s in Spain began to speak of specific repression that they faced because their orientation made them sexual minorities; other women did not suffer such specific double repression. The Jornadas de Sexualidad in June 1983 in Madrid were one example of lesbian feminists speaking out on this issue. The Jornada was organized by the Colectivo de Feministas Lesbianas. As part of the event, they counted the number of events carried out by feminists more generally in 1975 and 1976 and counted 32 that took on an explicitly heterosexual perspective. The Basque based Colectivo de Feministas Lesbianas participated in the the jornada. Citing their document, they said that the feminist movement in Spain had taken a heterosexual trajectory, with earlier works from 1975 and 1976 assuming a heterosexual perspective. [4]

The focus of the gay rights movement on HIV and AIDS in the Felipe Gonzalez period in Spain was used institutionally to downplay lesbian and feminist voices, citing the intense urgency to combat the ongoing epidemic. They were more effective at using this approach in this period because lesbians and feminist groups to which lesbians belonged had effectively become demilitarized as a result of institutionalized views that the major goals of both groups had been accomplished during the transition period.[5]

Some lesbian groups began breaking away from the broad feminist movement in the 1980s because the feminist movement structured itself as heterosexual. These lesbians wanted to break with that model; they were not content to just have visibility and acceptance. It would be from these groups the queer feminism would soon emerge.

By 1983, Spanish lesbian political activity fell into one of three branches, lesbians in the ghetto, lesbian feminists, and lesbians inside homosexual rights organizations.

At the 1983 I Jornadas de Lesbianas en Euskadi, Colectivo Feminista de Lesbianas de Madrid did a presentation titled “Lesbianism and the feminist movement or why it is dangerous for the feminist movement to accept heterosexuality as SEXUALITY”, which reviewed the history of lesbianism in the feminist movement, with a starting point of the 1979 Jornadas de Granada.

Spain went from a huge pro-sex movement where the majority was in support of pornography and prostitution to eventually being much more divided on the issue. Those who were opposed to both were the minority in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Lesbian feminist collectives, particularly CFLM, tried to change those attitudes and start tough debates on the topic.

In the early 1990s, lesbians nationally faced a number of specific challenges as it related to the HIV and AIDS epidemic. First, women in general were maligned as the focus of attention tended to be on depicting women as transmission vectors, not as people who were victims of the HIV and AIDS epidemic. Women were viewed as passive participants in the fight against AIDS and HIV, with the disease largely being a male one which men should fight. For lesbians, there were additional specific challenges. One was the existence of large amounts of misinformation about how lesbians could or could not acquire HIV or AIDS because of male based assumptions about lesbian sexual practices. Lesbians were often portrayed as a group completely not at risk of getting AIDS or HIV which opened them up to harassment and abuse when they went in for testing or treatment. Another was the AIDS made lesbians even more invisible. Lastly, AIDS displaced some lesbian feminist goals as activists diverted their attention away from other causes and towards the epidemic. [7]

AIDS at times rendered lesbian sexuality even more invisible in the 1990s because AIDS impacted men and women different. Because lesbians were less likely to contract AIDS through sex, their sexual practices were sometimes viewed as less important by both society and by LGBT organizations. The focus of the gay rights movement on HIV and AIDS in this period was used institutionally to downplay lesbian and feminist voices, citing the intense urgency to combat the ongoing epidemic. They were more effective at using this approach in this period because lesbians and feminist groups to which lesbians belonged had effectively become demilitarized as a result of institutionalized views that the major goals of both groups had been accomplished during the transition period.

During the 1990s, lesbians started to rejoin homosexual rights groups, starting or restarting lesbian sections within their structures. This was true of Coordinadora Gay y Lesbiana de Barcelona (CGL), Colectivo de Lesbianas y Gays de Madrid (COGAM) and Col.lectiu Lambda. They rejoined because of the deliberate exclusion they were finding in the militant feminist community who began to started engaging in identity politics, supporting the ending of sex based differences while supporting gender based differences. Feminists did not want to be associated with lesbians because of the stigma they brought with them for, among other things, their gender non-conformity.

The 1997 Jornadas de Lesbianas Feministas in Bilbao had lesbian feminist participants from Córdoba, Bilbao, Oviedo, Gijón, Torrelavega, Salamanca, Santiago de Compostela, Bilbao, San Sebastián, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Logroño, Pamplona, Madrid, Murcia, Valencia and Barcelona.

The feminist lesbian movement was the precursor to the queer feminist and transfeminist movements in Spain, largely built on the work of CFLM. Until around 2011 or so, queer feminism was called transfeminismo at which point, a shift in terminology started to occur.[8]

A study was carried out between 2011 and 2012 involving 20 self-identified lesbians from Andalucía, Cantabria, Catalonia, Extremadura, Madrid, Murcia, Navarra, Basque Country and Valencia who were in co-parenting families, raising children conceived through assisted reproductive techniques together with a partner. Like Americans, many of the respondents defined people in their friends’ network as part of their family. All the lesbians interviewed by Gracia Trujillo and Elena Burgaleta in their study published in 2014 said that motherhood is a natural act, but not a rational one. They became parents because of that shared maternal desire. The majority of the women also referred to maternal instincts. One respondent said they had wanted to be a mother since they were around 19. Some respondents said that becoming a mother was also a cultural signal to others that they had “settled down” and were done with rebelling against non-heteronormative sexual practices. It also meant they tried to reconcile with family members, and especially with their own mothers. While queer feminism might suggest that these things should be resisted, the reality for lesbians in Spain was that real women did not feel the need to do so because they wanted to have families, spend the holidays with their families and recognize those familial bonds. For those interviewed, the identity of mother for many ended up trumping the identity of lesbian.

Around a 88% of lesbians in the late 2010s in La Rioja, the Basque Country, Navarra, Aragon, Madrid and Catalonia considered themselves feminists. Their feminism covered a number of varieties and had different levels of intensities. Of this 87.8%, 25% explicitly viewed themselves as not being radical feminists and 8.3% viewed themselves as being transfeminists. Younger lesbians were much more likely to eschew all labels around how they described themselves as feminists. [9]

Andalucía

17th century Spanish novelist María de Zayas Sotomayor was one of a few female writers in this period writing wrote highly suggestive pieces about female-female intimacy, exploring Sapphic love in works such as her 1637 story “La burlada Aminta y venganza del honor” and her 1647 story “Amar sólo por vencer”. These works approach the topic of female desire from a patriarchal perspective, not one a transgressive proto-feminist perspective where women get to define their own sexual desires.

María de Zayas Sotomayor’s close and personal relationship with the playwright and essayist Ana Caro de Mallén, including sharing a residence together in Madrid and neither being financially dependent on men, led to much speculation at the time about Zaya and Caro’s sexuality and that both were lesbians. Letters and diaries written by both women further appear to suggest they shared a spiritual and sexual union. This played a small part in their erasure from history that was only recovered in the 2000s, where both finally began to be recognized as Spain’s first feminists.

Carmen de Burgos may have been born in Rodalquilar on 10 December 1867 or she may have been born in the capital of the province; in either case, she spent much of her youth in the town, the eldest of a large number of daughters that her parents had. The author would go on to write one of the most important feminist works of her era, La mujer moderna y sus derechos, as well as being an out lesbian later in her life. In addition to these things, she would become the first war correspondent for a newspaper.

AMG came into existence in 1976 following the general resuregence of feminist activities in the at the Universidad de Granada following Franco’s death. The city was primed for such an organization as issues surrounding women had begun to become quite heated around Universidad de Granada as women found the situation quite conservative and repressive, and responded to that by vocalizing their opposition to the environment. They were formally constituted by members of the Partido Comunista, Movimiento Comunista and other leftist organizations. They joined COFEE by 1977, and worked with other feminist activists in regional Andalucía through Coordinadora Andaluza de Organizaciones Feministas. Members attended the I Jornadas sobre Sexualidad in 1983 in Madrid along with the Encuentro Estatal sobre el derecho al Aborto in Madrid in 1981. Members also attended the II Jornadas sobre Lesbianismo in Madrid in 1988. The group was actively engaged in the debate around women’s sexuality and women’s bodies as it related to issues like abortion and male violence.

The Asamblea de Mujeres de Granada (AMG) was the main group around which lesbians in the city organized in the transition period. Some members had close ties Frente de Liberación Gay de Granada (FLGG) and Movimiento Comunida de Andalucía; a number of its members actually belonged to the women’s group of the latter. Theorists they drew inspiration from at the time included Simone de Beauvoir and Kate Millet, Gayle Rubin and Angela Davis, alongside works such as The Golden Notebook of Doris Lessing or The Diaries of Anais Nin. The group was divided in their opinion as to what road feminism should take, with some advocating for feminism of equality and taking a more independent approach.

Primula was a radical feminist organization in Sevilla in the late 1970s. They had a sexuality commission. The group marched in Sevilla’s pride march in 1978.

AMG would go on to organize with COFEE the 1979 Jornadas Feministas Estatales in their city.[10]

II Jornadas Estatales de la Mujer was held in Granada in 1979. Over 1,200 women from across Spain participated over the three day event. Among these women were a number of lesbians. Topics addressed included womanhood, motherhood, youth, marriage and family, women’s education, media, the class struggle and its connection to the feminist movement, abortion, reforms to the penal code, pornography and women’s sexuality. Different types of feminism were also addressed including feminism of the difference. At the 1979 II Jornadas Estatales sobre la Mujer in Granada, lesbian separatist Gretel Ammann presented her work Feminismo de la diferencia along with”Como lesbiana contra la nueva moral feminista”. The work went on to become important in radical feminist circles in Spain. The Grup de Dones d’Alacant gave a presentation that dealt with lesbianism. The event took place in December. Other lesbians who participated in the event included Montse Oliván, who began to introduce the concept of gender identity in her support of transexuals participating in women’s spaces. The event was important because it showed that lesbians were aligning with the feminist liberation movement.

Feminist political activist Victoria Sau discussed the topic of political lesbianism at the 1979 Granada conference.

There was a lot of internal discussion among lesbians about whether they should call themselves lesbian feminists or feminist lesbians during the late 1970s and early 1980s. It could create long debates in groups. The order was important as it reflected both an identity and priorities. The majority eventually went with lesbian feminist. One group involved in such a name debate was Grup de Dones d´Alacant. They gave a presentation on the topic at the II Jornadas Feministas Estatales in Granada in 1979.

El Cactus was a bar owned by a pair of conservative lesbians in Sevilla in the 1980s. They did not like public displays of affection among their patrons despite being one of the only women owned bars in the city at the time. Grupo de Lesbianas Feministas Akelarre would some time hold kiss-in events at the bar for that reason.

AGM’s sexuality commission was created around 1980 at a time when members of the group were beginning to question heterosexuality as a political regime, and subjects attendant to that like reproduction and motherhood, the right to sexual pleasure, masturbation, and clitoral stimulation versus vaginal penetration.

For lesbians in the group, they prioritized their militancy as feminists over their militancy as homosexual because they felt the oppression they suffered as women was worse. They also tried to increase the visibility of lesbians in public spaces from inside the sexuality commission. They engaged in a campaign on the radio, in the media and at the Universidad de Granada. In 1982, the published the Boletín Malva, which contained various reflections about free sexuality of women.

Grupo de Lesbianas Feministas Akelarre was founded in Sevilla in 1984 by five lesbians who left Asamblea de Mujeres de Sevilla because they did not feel like the organization devoted enough attention to lesbian issues. Members included Carmen Flores and Pepa Álvarez. While abortion was a major issue, lesbians in the 1980s were more concerned with the bigger issue of invisibility and silence. They rejected the position of being double militants within the feminist movement. Instead, they wanted to be independent of the constraints of both the gay right’s movement and the feminist movement. Their primary goal was lesbian visibility. At the same time, aware of the debates around various types of feminism going on around them, they took the side of feminism of the difference, and aligned themselves more closely with autonomous and separatist lesbianism. The group rejected support from state institutions, with funding coming from individual members or via fundraising activities. Their first year was spent reading and discussing about lesbian-feminism and political practices. They developed a close relationship with lesbians in Barcelona and lesbian militants in FLHA. Members also attend conferences in the Basque Country, Barcelona and Valencia. The group were interviewed by Los reporteros de Canal Sur TV at some point. They also held events where they would go to bars, and kiss each other as a way of making lesbians visible. Bars they went to included El Chandelier, El Sopa de Gansos, El Caleco, El Olivo, and El Cactus. This often resulted in them being expelled from bars. Part of their intention in doing this was to try to make the gay ghetto disappear, and make lesbianism be able to be able to be right next to heterosexuality in social situations. The group would also graffitied the city with phrases like “No al silencio, lesbianismo al viento”, “Lesbiana, no te cures”, “Viva el lesbianismo vivo”. The group never considered getting involved with the fight against HIV / AIDS as it just did not appear relevant to their activism. They group also did not debate the issue of pornography or prostitution, but were generally abolitionist in their viewpoint. The group eventually dissolved in 1991 as members went their own various ways for personal reasons.

Librería Fulmen, located at calle Zaragoza, 36 in Sevilla was a historical feminist bookstore run by María Fulmen. Upon her death, all her assets were transferred to a group of feminist women who founded the Fundación María Fulmen. They have preserved the space, and use it as place to carry out feminist activities. During the mid-1980s, the bookstore was an important lesbian reference point in the city, hosting meetings for women’s groups and lesbians, with the bottom level being the bookstore and the top floor being María Fulmen’s home. Fulmen was a well-known lesbian feminist.

By the early 1990s, AMG had backed away from institutional feminism and had begun to interact with the newly emerging queer feminist movement coming out of Madrid. By the late 1990s, they were fully immersed in this, discussing things like gender binarism, the deconstruction of identities and the diversity of experiences within the feminist movement. AMG started welcoming transsexual women like Kim Pérez into their group. By this point, the group also started supporting the rights of prostitutes.

In the early 1990s, there were groups of feminist lesbians in Córdoba, Sevilla and Cádiz.

Asamblea de Mujeres de Sevilla was active in 1997. Located at Calle Alberto Lista, 16, they were a lesbian feminist group for women from Southern Spain.

Lil@.koño was founded in 1999 after generational differences in Asamblea de Mujeres de Bizkaia, with younger lesbofeminists feeling like their concerns and demands were not being addressed by older members. They engaged in a number of activities on the premises of AMB, including organizing workshops, making songbooks and stickers, and engaging in political activities. In 2000, Lil@.koño members attended a conference in Cordoba where they met other young lesbofeminists.

Córdoba hosted the 2000 state feminist conference, with over 3,000 women participating. Many of them were young. The conference attracted feminists from a diverse swath of Spanish feminist perspectives. It would help mobilize the next generation of Spanish feminists, including lesbians in those circles. Transwomen were included in it, and there were transwomen participating in it including Laura Bugalho of the Colectivo Trans Galicia and Identidad de Género president Kim Pérez. They each presented a session. Transfeminism was also defined for the first time in a Spanish context. The transfeminist movement wouldn’t start fully until 2009.

VIII Jornadas Feministas: El Feminismo es… y será took place in Córdoba in 2000.[11]

Starting around 2001, the lesbian community pushed for anti-discrimination laws, hate crime legislation and laws to protect lesbians from domestic violence. This coincided with the earliest period of Spanish fourth-wave feminism that emerged in response to the murder of Ana Orantes in Granada on 17 December 1997 and was initially led by women in the media.

The 2009 Jornadas Feministas Estatales in Granada included a number of presentations by Conjuntos Difusos about gender binaryism, transfeminism and fighting against transphobia. One presentation at the conference was titled “translesbianismo y otros deseos transdiversos” held in the Espacio de Debate and presented by Juana Ramos and Amets Suess.

Podemos Feminismo Andalucía mentioned Lesbian Visibility Day on their Twitter account on 26 April 2016, using the hashtag #DiaVisibilidadLesbica.

The Asamblea Feminista de Cádiz organized a lesbian kissing event with the motto, “solo los besos nos taparán la boca” on 26 April 2017 at Plaza del Palillero in honor of Día de la Visibilidad Lésbica. Among the lesbians attending was Esperanza Moreno Hernández, the co-author of the first manual on lesbian sexuality. It was supported by the Fundación Municipal de la Mujer del Área de Justicia Social del Ayuntamiento de Cádiz as part of their I Plan Municipal contra la Homofobia y la Transfobia. A half hour later, it was followed up by a presentation of conference organized by Moreno at the Fernando Quiñones del Centro Integral de la Mujer organized by Asamblea Feminista de Cádiz.

Orgullo Crítico del Sur was held in Sevilla in 2019 to commemorate the fifieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. The critical event was organized by members of leftwing groups, trans groups, feminists, student groups, trade unions and politicians. They wanted a model for Pride that was different than the highly commercialized Pride events that were taking place, and in 2019 wanted to recover the fighting spirit of Stonewall, and to pay a historical debt to the transwomen that started the Stonewall uprising to make the world a freer place. [12]

By 2019, AMG was a shell of its former glory with a tiny membership and mainly involved with supporting young feminists and preserving historical memory.

Café Feminista de Cádiz mentioned Lesbian Visibility Day on their Twitter account on 26 April 2020, using the hashtag #DiaVisibilidadLesbica.

In late 2021, Asociación de Transexuales de Andalucía-Sylvia Rivera and the Asociación Española contra las Terapias de Conversión formally denounced a psychologist from Seville for engaging in conversation therapy in violation of Ley 8/2017, article 62e, which banned the “promotion, dissemination or execution by any means any type of therapy to modify sexual orientation and gender identity in order to adjust it to a heterosexual and/or cissexual pattern.” In February 2022, the regional government indicated that they would be seeking to sanction the psychologist, a first since the law was implemented four years prior. The psychologist argued she did not treat dysphoric patients, and that in her feminist practice she worked with female victims to understand that the consequences of patriarchal systems are part of the reasons they have been oppressed as women.

Aragon

Frente Feminista de Zaragoza had a Comisión de Lesbianas during the mid-1980s as they saw lesbianism as an emerging issue for feminists alongside the struggle for other political and social goals like free abortions and right-wing attacks against women. Their magazine, Mujer, had an article in their June 1986 issue titled “La existencia lésbica”.

Colectivo de Lesbianas del Frente Feminista de Zaragoza attended the 3 to 5 June 1988 Madrid hosted Jornades de Lesbianes where they presented a session called El Pliegue de la servidumbre.

Podemos Aragon celebrated Orgullo in 2021, releasing an institutional statement in honor of the event. The statement discussed how contrary to the large opposition to the law from Spanish feminists, the gender identity law was feminist because it recognized transwomen as women. It also mentioned how lesbians, bisexuals and single women needed access to reproductive assistance in public health.

Asturias

During the 1990s, XEGA worked with Colectivu de Feministes Llesbianes dAsturies on joint activism, including Pride events.

Colectivu de Feministes Llesbianes dAsturies and XEGA had designed posters in 1995 for Orgullo in support of same-sex marriage but decided that this was potentially to inflammatory and instead went with a more neutral one seeking equali rights for gays and lesbians. Still, an unofficial poster circulated making this demand and was one of the first of its kind to appear at a Pride event in Spain.

Colectivu de Feministes Llesbianes dAsturies and XEGA’s theme for the 1996 Orgullo march in Gijon was lesbian visibility. A secondary focus was also on the legal recognition of homosexual couples in public institutions like the justice system, healthcare, education along with recognition in private institutions like banking and insurance.

Colectivo de Feministas Llesbianes de Asturias disappeared from Asturias in 1997.

Balearic Islands

The seeds of lesbian militancy in the Franco period originated in the feminist and homosexual rights activist communities. The early major centers in the late 1970s were Barcelona, Mallorca, the Basque Country and Valencia. [13]

If three or more suspected radical feminists gathered together in the late 1970s or early 1980s in Palma de Mallorca, people would report them to the police.

Marisa Ardila only realized was a lesbian at the age of 23, mostly out of fear of being penetrated by a man. She had tried to had boyfriends in this period and formally had one, but never had sex with them out of a fear of getting pregnant and later having fears of rejection. It was only later that she realized she had sexual attraction to women, but she did not have a name for it at that time because lesbianism was not a word that was used except as a means of criticizing other women and trying to mark them as different. She claimed that she was not born a lesbian but made herself into one, despite the fact that she also claimed that she never liked the male body. She eventually found refuge and a sense of belonging in the feminist movement and in the gay right’s movement. One of the feminists in her group was Leonor Taboada, one of the first and most prominent feminists in the Balearic Islands in the post Franco period. Among their early activities were teaching sex education and things like how to use a diaphragm. Ardila continued her involvement in both communities into the 2010s.

Basque Country

The Colectivos de Lesbianas Feministas started growing in the Basque Country in 1974 in response to the struggle between lesbians and heterosexual women within the feminist movement. Lesbians no longer wanted to continually fight a battle over a default heterosexual perspective and wanted their own feminist organizations. They would form their own collectives in Bilbao, San Sebastián and Irun and have a Basque Country coordinator. The Irun group rejected the use of the word lesbian, and instead called themselves Lumatza. The groups would meet regularly, hold events and organize to work towards collective goals of their feminist organizations. Starting in 1986, they published the Spanish and Basque language lesbian feminist magazine Sorginak. The magazine contained many different types of materials and a variety of different things. The magazine also included contact information and meeting information so lesbians could meet other like-minded feminists. Sorginak was made by hand so few editions remain.

At the same time that gay rights organizations were being founded in the major cities in the Basque country in the late 1970s, women’s rights organizations were also being founded in parallel. These women’s rights organizations initially attracted some lesbians as lesbians first viewed their issues as ones related to women, and prioritizing the liberation of women first. The lesbians in these groups co-existed alongside gay rights groups, but had ideological differences over the importance of issues like women’s rights, lesbian visibility and the need of lesbians to self-organize. It was why some lesbians split from feminist groups in 1979 to form Emakumearen Sexual Askatasunerako Mugimendua (ESAM) in 1979.

Juventud Gay de Euskadi (JGE) was founded in 1977 in Bilbao. Coordinadora de Marginados was founded that same year in Bilbao. They were given a given a void at the Jornadas Feministas de Euskadi de 1977 because of their intersections with the feminist movement and because they had lesbian members integrated into their organizations.

Gay Hotsa published the first article about lesbianism in the Basque Country in 1977. The article was titled “Demos la cara’ and written by EGHAM. The article said, “Homosexual men, as men, have certain advantages over lesbians because they have to deal with double exclusion: being a woman and being gay.” The article goes on to say, “A clear example of this is the fact that lesbianism itself is completely unknown. Homosexual men have been prominent in history, but nothing is said about lesbians, which is a tiny role known to women in history in general, as lesbians do not even appear.” The article concludes by requesting that feminist organizations welcome lesbians into their organizations since lesbians also suffer from oppression for being women.

1977 also saw Bilbao host the Jornadas Feministas de Euskadi in the classrooms of EHU/UPV. The coinciding of these events led to the Jornadas having actual discussions on the marginalization of lesbian voices within both the gay rights movement and the feminist movement. JGE folded not long after.

The Colectivos de Lesbianas Feministas started growing in the Basque Country in 1978 in response to the struggle between lesbians and heterosexual women within the feminist movement. Lesbians no longer wanted to continually fight a battle over a default heterosexual perspective and wanted their own feminist organizations. They would form their own collectives in Bilbao, San Sebastián and Irun and have a Basque Country coordinator.

Emakumearen Sexual Askatasunerako Mugimendua (ESAM)/Movimiento para la Liberación Sexual de la Mujer was a Basque lesbian feminist group that existed by 1979. The Bilbao based group was one of the lesbian activist groups in Spain in that time period. ESAM defined themselves as homosexuals who were also women from the beginning, and that the framework of lesbian liberation was homosexual liberation and feminism, that they needed to fight for sexual liberation generally, while surrounding themselves by women and issues related to women. Members of ESAM would later go on to found Colectivo de Lesbianas Feministas de Vizcaya.

After having done a round of consolidation in 1979 in the Basque Country, EHGAM had gone mostly dormant by the early 1980s. In Álava, the gay rights movement only remained active in large part because of lesbian feminists involved with Asamblea de Mujeres de Álava. These lesbians were the ones who were organizing pride events during the early 1980s.

Bilbao and Valencia joined Madrid and Barcelona in having gay rights demonstrations on 24 June 1979 in honor of the Stonewall riots. The march was done with the support of feminist groups, which did not happen in most other major cities outside those four who also had marches that year.

During the early 1980s, Basque lesbians aligned with the Colectivo de Lesbianas Feministas organized jornadas lesbianas, Jornadas de Sexualidad and to strengthen their ties with the very heterosexual aligned feminist movement in the region.

Grup de Lesbianes Feministes de Barcelona (GLFB) and Bizkaiko Lesbiana Feministen Kolektiboa (BLFK) defied the 1980s Spanish trend of identifying as feminist lesbians happening most elsewhere in Spain and instead identified as lesbian feminists. They did so with the intention of trying to make themselves visible as lesbians and to separate themselves from groups like CFLM who focused almost exclusively on feminist activities.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Basque lesbian feminist groups wrote their publications in two languages, Spanish and Basque. Their publications covered a wide variety of topics like what it meant to be a lesbian, poetry, comics, jokes, feminist critiques, calls for demonstrations, book and record reviews, and critiques of government institutions. Sorginak was the most important magazine in the region in this period. Sorginak was the most important because it helped to disseminate the works of international authors like Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Monique Witting into the regional lesbian consciousness. It also helped bring up other issues like racism, the situation for lesbian immigrants, lesbian feminist life in Latin America and the Caribbean and the realities of lesbian life in Berlin, Germany.

EHGAM, gay rights group, and ESAM, Basque lesbian feminist group, jointly protest the firing and prosecution of a teacher, Eliane Morrissens, in Belgium for being a lesbian circa 1980. Gays and lesbians working together from separate orgs on international issues of lesbian persecution.

EHGAM in Irun in 1981 saw lesbians and gays working together on issues that concerned them both. Lesbians involved with the organization saw a need to inject more feminism into their efforts. They actively debated a number of issues and approaches. It was from this group that the Colectivo de Lesbianas de Navarra would be founded in the late 1980s, which pushed for greater visibility of lesbians while also maintaining their position in the broader feminist community.

Lesbian collectives became organized more autonomously separate from Asambleas de Mujeres in Bizkaia, doing so in 1982 as Grupo de Lesbianas Feministas de Bizkaia. This lesbian group would later create the highly influential magazine Sorginak. A lesbian collective at a Bizkaia assembly on 17 May 1986 explained this disconnect as, “We are a currently thinking globalist feminists contesting heteropatriarchy, insofar as we consider as an unquestionable premise the abolition of the heterosexual norm, and we can not be encompassed as a collective in the A.M.B. since it does not assume in its struggle for the transformation of patriarchy the heterosexual norm as a basic point in the oppression of women.”

Members of Coordinadora Feminists created a branch of Euskal Herriko Gay Askapen Mugimendua (EHGAM) in Irun in 1982, with the idea of the organization being run by men and women. Despite the organization being founded by and run by women, they soon turned their focus to the problems of gay men to the exclusion of women. They acknowledged this problem in 1987. Members of Coordinadora Feminists finally resolved this issue by creating a lesbian commission. Their relationship had devolved as the feminist movement was passing lesbians by in the city. During the late 1980s, lesbians in the group created their own organization called Colectivo de Lesbianas de Navarra.

III Encuentro de Feministas Independientes took place in 1982 in San Sebastián.

Bizkaiko Lesbiana Feministen Kolektiboa was created in 1983. The importance of lesbian visibility in the group began to diminish over time as they began to work more on feminist goals.

The first edition of the Jornadas de Lesbianas de Euskadi were held in Errenteria in May 1983. 250 women participated, representing all the major areas of the Basque country. Lesbians also came from Madrid to participate. The I Jornadas de Lesbianas de Euskadi followed a strategy of lesbians being constituted as an autonomous organizations within the feminist and homosexual rights movement. If autonomy was not maintained, lesbians within these groups to try to maintain it. Organizers of the conference strove to address this issue, saying that of course lesbians should be involved in those movements, though participation within the homosexual rights movement could result in lesbians being put in a ghetto because of the macho character of the homosexual rights movement and because lesbian issues would not be dealt with separately by the whole of society when coming from within that movement. They said of their connection to the feminist movement, “We, as women of the Donosti Assembly and part of the Feminist Movement, what we think is that it is very important to join the Feminist Movement, the marginalization and oppression that we suffer is due to the sexual option adopted, let us unite it with the situation that all women suffer.”[14]

There were a number of attacks against lesbians and gays in San Sebastian in December 1983. EGHAM, EHGALT and the Asamblea de Mujeres de Donostia released a press release to condemn these attacks. The attacks included physical threats, insults, attempted assaults, physical aggression. Lesbian groups, feminist groups and gay rights groups had spoken to the provincial government of Gipuzkoa on at least four occasions to complain about the abuse, along with trying to talk to the mayor’s office. They also tried to file complaints with the Guardia Civil, with little follow-up being done in response. The press release was followed up by five days of protests and a demand to speak to the president of the province about the continuing harassment.

Colectivo de Lesbianas Feministas de Bizkaia was founded in 1984, drawing members from ESAM, AMB and the broader feminist movement. Part of the reason for the organization’s created was that at a political level, there was no recognition of lesbianism; it was viewed as sexual option that was to be reviled inside the feminist movement; the feminist movement supported lesbianism but did not defend lesbianism politically.

II Jornadas Feministas de Euskadi took place in 1984.

Colectivos de Lesbianas Feministas de Bizkaia y Gipuzkoa was created in 1985. The group held regular meetings where they held discussions and planned events and campaigns to support their goals.

Colectivo de Lesbianas Feministas de Euskadi was founded in 1985. It brought together lesbians from Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa and Navarra. They would organize a number of events around 8 March International Women’s Labor Day and Orgullo.

Geu Emakumeok, a feminist periodical first produced in Bilbao in 1985 by Asamblea de Mujeres de Bizkaia, dedicated their third edition to lesbianism.

Orgullo was organized by Asamblea de Mujueres Vizcaya, Colectivo de Lesbianas Feminists de Vizcata (EGHAM) and Movimiento de Liberación Gay de Euskal Herria in 1986. They convened at Zabalburutik.

In 1986, Coordinadora de Grupos Feministas de Euskadi published “Lesbianak, zergatik ez?” The cover featured two naked women. The document was produced wtih the intention of trying to make lesbian relationships more visible and trying to normalize sexual relationships and sexual desire between women.

In the late 1980s, there were two distinct currents in the homosexual rights movement. One was for mirroring heterosexual rights and relationships with institutions like marriage. The other was about dismantling heterosexual norms. Colectivo de Lesbianas Feministas de Bizkaia was part of the group trying to dismantle those norms and did not join Coordinadora por los derechos de gays y lesbianas de Euskal Herria and their efforts to work to establish civil unions.

Matarraskak was founded in 1987 as an organization for young feminists. They rejected heterosexual norms and soon positioned themselves politically as lesbians. They were one of a few lesbian and gay groups at the time who rejected the push for civil unions and same-sex marriage as they preferred to see the institution of marriage to be abolished.

Colectivo de Lesbianas Feministas de Guipúzcoa had many discussions in the late 1980s and early 1990s on the complication of same-sex marriage and its relationship to lesbianism. They were happy that lesbians were finally being addressed by society, but at the same time they wanted their needs to be addressed as independent and autonomous women with their own sexual capacity. Marriage did not fit that definition.

Euskal Herriko Lesbianen III Jardunaldiak took place in December 1987. One of their sessions was titled, “Lesbian Movement and Organization”.

At the February 1988 Jornadas contra la Violencia a las mujeres in the Irun, Colectivo de Lesbianas Feministas de Bizkaia presented a paper that said, “Silence, as the cruelest response that can exist, stands as the most subtle and deceptive aggression that heteropatriarchy uses”. Outside this presentation, there were few other presentations about or by lesbians.

Emakumearen Euskal Erakundea (Emakunde) was created by law in 1988 as the regional body to design and promote policies that ensured equality for women. Despite lesbians having played a major role in the Basque feminist movement since the mid-1970s, lesbians would not be references by the organization until 1999, with the Positive Action Plan (1999-2005). In that plan, lesbians were mentioned in terms of addressing potential interventions to assist in facility women’s rights in the region.

Jornadas Estatales de Lesbianas took place in 5 June 1988 in Madrid. This supported feminism and lesbian feminism, and was held in coordination with Spanish feminist organizations. Lesbians from the Basque Country attended along with members of the feminist group Matarraskak. Around 2000 women attended. One presentation had the playful title of “Lesbian from the provinces looking for a girlfriend”. Another paper reflected on the goals and experiences of lesbian feminism in Madrid. The Catalan group L`eisx violeta did a presentation about power dynamics in relationships, violence in relationships and breakups. Bizkaiko Lesbiana Feministen Kolektiboak and the Sexualitate Batzordeak did a presentation where they discussed pornography.

Jornadas Estatales de Lesbianasa took place in 5 June 1988 in Madrid. This supported feminism and lesbian feminism, and was held in coordination with Spanish feminist organizations. Lesbians from the Basque Country attended.

Orgullo 1989 Bilbao had the motto “Lesbianak edonon. Contra la norma heterosexual” and “Lesbianismoa kalera. Politika Antidiskriminatzailearen alde”. It was organized by Matarraskak, CLFB and AMB. They prepared a poster and a leaflet for the protest. Their materials were signed by Coordinadora de Lesbianas Feministas de Euskadi.

The Colectivo de Lesbianas Feministas de Bizkaia had a Monday night radio show on Txomin Barullo Irratia called “Izar Beltzak” in 1989.

During the early 1990s, there was a lot of discussion in the news about transvestism and transsexualism. The topic was of interest to lesbians seeking to address the issue of sexual diversity. The writings of radical feminist Gayle Rubin were being translated and shared in feminist publications out of Madrid, and then shared again in the lesbian community. The works of Margharet Nichols were also being translated and shared along similar paths. Like other issues faced by lesbians, opinions were not uniform on the issue of transvestism and transsexualism and it led to some splits and the creation of new groups in places like the Basque Country. This new group was Agerian Lesbianen Taldea. The group worked with gay men on a number of issues including the adoption issue in Vitoria-Gasteiz in March 1994. They also were an important advocate for local recognition of same-sex couples in de facto relationships. They, unlike some of their contemporaries who disagreed with them on the issue of transsexuality, believed gay men could be worked with as they both suffered similar types of discrimination.

The lesbian feminist organization Lumatza was created in the Basque Country in 1990. They held regular meetings to organize campaigns and discuss topics of interest to members.

As part of 1991 International Women’s Labor Day activities, Colectivo de Lesbianas Feministas de Bizkaia did a campaign called “Desde nuestra acera”. They held a debate about topics including de facto couples, labor discrimination, refugee status, in education homophobia no, lesbian visibility, pensions, adoption, inheritance and marriage.

The homosexual front movement in Spain, recognizing that they should try bring lesbians back into the fold and out from the feminist movement decided on a strategy starting in 1991 of supporting the legal recognition of same-sex de facto couples in a civil registry. The homosexual liberation rights groups leading that were COGAM in Madrid, Col.lectiu Lambda in Valencia, and GEHITU in the Basque Country.

The Pink Vote was an effort that also met with some resistance. The effort was intended to mobilize voters to turn out and vote for political parties that would support homosexual rights ahead of the 1991 Spanish general elections. Issues they wanted people to vote for parties supporting included recognition of the rights of homosexual couples, the creation of anti-discrimination laws, and the inclusion of homosexuality in education. The movement was successful, ultimately turning out some 600,000 voters on these issues. COFLHEE and some lesbian feminist groups, including ones in the Basque Country, though disagreed with this. They felt these efforts were too reformist.

Yolanda Martínez was a member of LCR in the mid-1970s, joining the Otxarkoaga cell in Bilabo shortly after the death of Franco. As she wanted to do theater and involve women, she started doing lesbian poetry readings and putting on the music of Vangelis during cell meetings. Interest and support from cell members led her to do gigs in towns like Elorrio, where she continued poetry readings and reinterpretations of songs like “Es mi hombre” by Sara Montiel with another lesbian, followed by a debate on the subject. She then participated in a feminist jornada in Lejona, which led to the creation of an all women’s theater group named MARI URRIKIE. Many of their productions had lesbian themes. The group continued on into the 1980s. This At least one of her productions was performed at Arenal. In the mid-1970s, she performed a reading from the book, “El Cuerpo Lesbiano” by Minique Wittig which was recorded. This was one of the first recordings of a living lesbian artist producing lesbian themed content in Spain. In 1991, still involved with CLFB and EHGAM, she produced Las Novias at the Frontón de la Esperanza in Bilbao, using local lesbians and gay men as actors in the play. The plot focused around a multiple lesbian wedding as a way of criticizing heterosexual norms. She was assisted in the production of the play by Elena Sarasola. Yolanda Martínez, Nerea Calonge and Idoia Bilbao produced “Encarceladas. Pasión entre rejas” in 1992 in honor of International Women’s Day of Labor on 8 March. The play was based on an original script written by the three women and had a lesbian story line with a happy ending. The play, done in the almodóvar style, was one of the first to be staged at Bilbao’s Bilborock, then known as Iglesia de la Merced, with admission costing 500 pesetas. Financing for the play came from Asamblea de Mujeres de Bizkaia after a lot of internal debate, with some members of the Asamblea ultimately joining the cast. Later that year, Yolanda Martínez was the master of ceremonies at the I Convención Internacional por las libertades, sobre todo la sexual, held at Plaza Santiago in Bilbao and organized by Colectivo de Lesbianas Feministas de Bizkaia and EHGAM as part of Orgullo activities. In 2008, as part of Ladyfesta, she produced the short, “De compra con mi madre”.

Lesbianas Feministas de Bizkaia motto for Orgullo 1993 Bilbao was “Tú con don, yo con doña”. The purpose was to highlight the freedom to choose to be an out lesbian.

In June 1994, lesbians from Vitoria created Asociación de Lesbianas Alavesas. They joined the Basque Colectivos de Lesbianas Feministas. It was the first lesbian associated created in Vitoria. The women had originally been part of a feminist collective, and the creation of a same-sex registry put them into a position where others were asking them to articulate political demands.

Of the 38 papers presented at the III Feminist Days of Euskadi in 1994, only one was about lesbians. It was titled “Reflections about lesbian politics” and presented by the Collective of Lesbian Feminists of Bizkaia.

A. L. A. (Arabako Lesbianen Alkartea) was founded in 1994. It was one of the last explicitly lesbian feminist groups to be founded in the region. They held regular meetings to organize campaigns and discuss topics of interest to members.

AGERIAN LESBIANEN TALDEA, Colectivo de lesbianas feministas de Bizkala, located at Calle Jardines n° 6, 3° izda, were active in 1997.

Jornadas de Lesbianas Feministas were held in Bilbao in 1997 at a time when lesbian feminist groups were going through a lot of difficulties, with many having disappeared in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Euskal Herriko Lesbianen III was the third edition of lesbian groups gathering in the Basque country. It took place in Bilbao in 1997 from 6 – 8 December. The tradition to a new style of activism and the splits in activism goals were present at the meeting over issues like transsexuality, making it one the last of its kind in the Basque Country, gradually disappearing in 2005 when Bizkaiko Lesbiana Feministen Kolektiboaren was formally dissolved.

During the mid and late 1990s, mixed lesbian and gay organizations again became the dominant organization model in the Basque country in a return to the situation following the immediate death of Franco. This time, they were joined by transgender people, with the theoretical models for understanding militancy being lowered and organizations switched at times to a more service model. Unlike other parts of Spain, lesbian feminist collectives disappeared in the Basque Country.

Colectivo de Lesbianas Feministas de Bizkaia became the exclusive publishers of the lesbian magazine Sorginak for 1998 and 1999.

Lil@.koño was founded in 1999 after generational differences in Asamblea de Mujeres de Bizkaia, with younger lesbofeminists feeling like their concerns and demands were not being addressed by older members. The group was had bollero feminists. They engaged in a number of activities on the premises of AMB, including organizing workshops, making songbooks and stickers, and engaging in political activities. In 2000, Lil@.koño members attended a conference in Cordoba where they met other young lesbofeminists. One of the group’s members was Leire Gómez.

In 2001, Colectivo de Lesbianas Feministas de Bizkaia’s Orgullo Bilbao motto was “La gran hermana también es lesbiana”. It was an attempt to use humor to vindicate lesbian life.

Colectivo de Lesbianas Feministas de Bizkaia’s 2004 International Women’s Labor Day poster said, “He podido amar a otra mujer. Neska maitea halnuenez”.

Colectivo de Lesbianas Feministas de Bizkaia folded in 2005, with the end of the organization highlighed in a video edited by Elena Sarasola. The video was uploaded to Centro de Documentación de Mujeres Maite Albiz’s YouTube channel.

Ladyfesta Bilbao was founded in 2007 as a feminist lesbian project. It had a DYI philosophy, and eschewed all institutions, especially heterosexual and patriarchal systems.

Mass-Medeak was founded in 2007 in Bizkaia after jornadas de Lesbianas de Gehitu in Donostia. Medeak was founded around the same time in Gipuzkoa. The two soon formed a sort of alliance – coalition with their own territorial scope. One of the topics of the jornada was the concept of lesbian identity within the LGTBI collective, and how the LGTBI collective lacked a feminist perspective. It was from these lesbians would end up gravitating towards transfeminism. This feminism was a result of merging the LGTBI with a feminist perspective. It was led in part by Laura Bugalho. They eventually became MDMA and modeled themselves after LSD in Madrid. For the next 13 years, they worked with multiple organizations on different platforms to promote social change and freedom, and to challenge heteronormative oppression.

Following the release of her 2018 album Estómac, Clara Peya visited to Basque country to perform the album in 2019. Her tour included stops in Arrigorriaga and Sopelana. The album was a mix of jazz, rap, pop and electric music. The album contained her feminist manifesto and her deconstruction of romantic love for which she won the Premio Enderrock for best album of the year. Peya’s performances on the piano were accompanied by Magalí Saré doing vocals and Vic Moliner on electric bass guitar.

Canary Islands

Colectivo Canario de Hombres y Mujeres Homosexuales was founded sometime between 1975 and 1977, and had a Coordinadora Feminista by 1977. By the 1980s, they had a presence on the islands of Gran Canaria and Tenerife.

Orgullo was celebreated on Calle López Socas in Las Palmas de Gran Canarias in 1979 and 1980. The protest was organized by Colectivo Canario de Hombres y Mujeres Homosexuales, with UGT, Congreso Clausura del Sindicato Obrero Canario (SOC) and feminist groups participating.

Organización para la liberación de la mujer (OLM) was active in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is likely the group attracted lesbian members, even if those members were heavily closeted. Lesbianism as a topic, based on the experiences of lesbians elsewhere, likely would rarely have come up in meetings or in discussions among other members. The general political goals of feminist groups during the transition would have been in support of legal equality, making the Spanish Constitution feminist, repeal of certain laws, and making divorce, contraceptives and abortion legal.

Cantabria

Feminismos Podemos Cantabria mentioned Lesbian Visibility Day on their Twitter account on 26 April 2016, using the hashtag #DiaVisibilidadLesbica.

Castilla – La Mancha

The Sexto Encuentro de Feministas Independientes met in Ciudad Real in May 1986. One of the primary groups pushing for and organizing the meeting was the Red de Amazonas.

Jornadas de Las Lagunas de Ruidera was organized in Ciudad Real in 1986. The event was financial by the provincial government, the local townhall and independent feminist organizations. Among the activities was a workshop on education and another on art. A group of lesbians also gave a public presentation at the conference.

Red de Amazonas was a network of lesbians all over Spain but based in Barcelona. They were in constant communication with lesbian organizations from all other the world, trying to document work being produced abroad for a domestic audience of Spanish lesbians. The group was founded after and in response to the Sexto Encuentro de Feministas Independientes held in May 1986 in Ciudad Real.

A meeting of feminists was held in Lagunas de Ruidera in 1986. It was inspired by the success of the state meeting of feminists in Granada in 1981 and other similar ones that came after it. It was the last state feminist conference as the Movimiento de las Independientes dissolved not long after as members had begun having issues finding common goals.

Arrebol, a feminist idea laboratory, mentioned Lesbian Visibility Day on their Twitter account on 26 April 2016, using the hashtag #DiaVisibilidadLesbica.

One of the events that took place as part of Orgullo 2016 Guadalajara was a group of round table discussions took place as part of these celebrations. One was about Feminism and LGTBI community. Another was one myths about HIV and STIs. The last was about macho sexist harassment and LGBTIphobia. The roundtable discussions took place at Salon de Actos, Delegación de la Junta, Calle Juan Bautista Topete, 1-3. Of the five events organized around Orgullo, this one was the one that was the closest to being most specifically about lesbians. None of the rest appeared targeted at specific groups either. The actual Orgullo concentración itself took place at Plaza Mayor in front of the Ayuntamiento de Guadalajara at 19:30 on 28 June 2016.

In 2017, Palacio del Infantado hosted the primeras jornadas feministas en Guadalajara from 3 to 5 March 2017 ahead of the 8 March 2017 International Women’s Labor Day protest. WADA presented one of the panels, “Indentidad de género y orientación sexual”. Of the seven activities taking place in the jornada, it was the only one to reference women’s sexuality.

Bolo-Bolo said on International Lesbian Visibility Day 2020 that the feminist movement’s importance to the lesbian community was one of the main reasons why Orgullo 2020 was being dedicated to women.

Public participation allowing commenting on the proposed Ley de Diversidad Sexual y Derechos LGTBI en Castilla-La Mancha was open from 5 November 2020 to 30 November 2020. Lesbians were mentioned seven times by the organizations and members of the public in response to the proposed law. Comment by AlianzaCBM – Alianza Contra el Borrado de las Mujeres, Podemos Castilla – La Mancha and Maurizio Montipo Spagnoli all grouped lesbians with homosexuals, bisexuals, intersexuals and transpeople in the mention. Yaiza Moreno-Garcia accounted for rest of the seven mentions saying that equating sex with gender identity allows coercive acts against homosexuals and especially against lesbian women who already deal with such coercion regularly on social media and where they are told to deconstruct their sexuality, called TERFs and transpobes, and threatened with rape. They said such a law would stymie freedom of speech and result in increased lesbian erasure, an event already seen at 8 March 2020 protests in Barcelona and Madrid where feminists were verbally and physically abused by proponents of self-ID.

On Día Internacional del Orgullo LGBT on 28 June 2021, Consejera de Igualdad and regional government spokesperson Blanca Fernández published an opinion piece about sorority, feminist and making lesbians, bisexual women and transwomen visible. She mentioned lesbians three times, twice in connection with transwomen and once separate from them where she said, “From Castilla-La Mancha we have also contributed to these advances from different areas, one of the most notable has been promoting the right of equal treatment for lesbian women in matters of human reproduction since 2017.”

In honor of Día Internacional del Orgullo LGTBI 2021, Castilla – La Mancha President Emiliano García-Page released a statement talked about the need to recover history and genealogy, and that was why the slogan for Orgullo that year was “Feminism, equality and human rights”. The rest of his statement did not mention lesbians even once. It mentioned women in general saying, “Feminism and the LGTBI movements have gone hand in hand in their claims for the sexual and bodily autonomy of women, for the equalization of the rights of all people who do not conform to normative gender mandates, for the recognition of the sexual diversity and in denouncing all forms of discrimination and inequality derived from heteropatriarchy.” Women were mentioned one other time in the statement, but that part included transwomen as part of women.

Castilla y León

Teresa Barbero was born in Ávila on 17 February 1932. She published her first collection of poetry at the age of 18. Afterwards, Barbero tried to dedicate herself to writing professionally but was unable to earn enough to do so. She often featured the city of her birth in her writing. She later became an educator and documentarian. Along with her husband, she created the literary review El Cobaya, which was published in her hometown between 1953 and 1959. Barbero was a feminist, with feminist ideas appearing in her writing. Following Franco’s death, when divorce became legal, she was one of the first women in the country to seek a divorce. The author died in 2020.

Asociación segoviana de la mujer (ASEM) was active in the late 1970s and early 1980s. [15] Comisión pro-derecho al aborto was active in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Valladolid. [16] Asamblea de Mujeres de Burgos was active in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is likely these group attracted lesbian members, even if those members were heavily closeted. Lesbianism as a topic, based on the experiences of lesbians elsewhere, likely would rarely have come up in meetings or in discussions among other members. The general political goals of feminist groups during the transition would have been in support of legal equality, making the Spanish Constitution feminist, repeal of certain laws, and making divorce, contraceptives and abortion legal. [17]

Genealogías feministas en el arte español: 1960-2010 is an exhibition that took place at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC) in León in 2012.[18]

Asamblea Feminista Burgos mentioned Lesbian Visibility Day on their Twitter account on 26 April 2021, using the hashtag #DiaVisibilidadLesbica.

Catalonia

Ana María Martínez Sagi was first published in a newspaper as a 19-year-old, and covered Catalan and Spanish politics. One of the topics she covered extensively was women’s suffrage and feminism. In 1929, she published her first book of poetry, with poems that expressed disgust at the idea of sex with men. One of her poems would be dedicated to Mulder. At Easter time in 1932, the women went holiday together in Alcudia, Mallorca.

While at university, Maria Mercè Marçal i Serra becomes involved with politics, Catalan nationalism and feminism. Among other anti-Franco activities she participated in at university was teaching the Catalan language in Sant Boi de Llobregat. While at university, she married a fellow male student who she separated from in 1976. By this time she was also publishing Catalan language poetry and winning literary awards. She had also cofounded a publishing house in 1973, focusing on discovering new Catalan language authors. Marçal was politically active by this time, joining Partit Socialista d’Alliberament Nacional (PSAN) in 1975 and eventually joining the party’s executive board. Marçal pariticpated in the 1976 Primeres Jornades Catalanes de la Dona at the Universitat de Barcelona. She only abandoned political activity in favor of feminist activism in 1980 following the birth of her daughter. Marçal became involved with university professor, philosopher and writer Fina Birulés y Bertran in 1984; they remained a couple until Marçal’s death from breast cancer on 5 July 1998.

Primeres Jornades Catalanes de la Dona took place for four days starting on 27 May 1976 in an auditorium at Universitat de Barcelona. Over 4,000 women attended. The meeting was important because it was one of the first open feminist meetings in Barcelona allowing women to voice their demands for rights denied them as a result of the dictatorship. It brought together a diverse collection of women from across the region. Discussions, workshops and papers written for the conference were then disseminated around the city afterwards at neighborhood clubs, cultural centers, professional organizations and churches. Women’s sexuality was addressed at the conference, along with overturning laws that made homosexuality a criminal offense. Among the lesbians participating were Gretel Ammann.[19]

After the primeres Jornades Catalanes de la Dona in May 1976, lesbians began to meet in small groups and then even larger groups, and then within groups inside the feminist movement. Feminism began to vindicate women’s sexual desires and pleasure, which was particularly relevant for lesbian women. These conversations helped moved feminism away from meerly thinking about sex as a reproductive activity that should take place within the context of heterosexual marriage to being about sexuality, to being about communication and about being able to communicate desire for pleasure. Lesbians helped feminists to open up the door to the possibility that sex could pleasurable. Most of these lesbians in feminist circles came from outside the militant homosexual rights movement, a movement at that time which referred to both men and women. These women often came from the feminist movement, trade unions, political organizations, and neighborhood organizations. One of the lesbians involved in the feminist movement in 1976 was Mercè Otero.

María Dolors Calvet pf Partido Socialista Unificado de Cataluña, activist Empar Pineda from Barcelona Movimiento Comunista de Cataluña, Assemblea de Catalunya, and later Madrid Comisión pro-derecho al aborto en Madrid and Colectivo de Feministas Lesbianas de Madrid came together around 1976 to try to inject feminism into Marxist ideological left wing groups during the Spanish transition period because, at that time, these groups were continuing to ignore the class struggles of women in a continuation of their sexism from the Second Republic and Franco periods. Through their efforts to raise feminist awareness inside these groups, they also helped facilitate the development of feminist thought among women militating inside them.[20]

During the late 1970s, there was a polarizing debate in the male led homosexual rights movement about who should be at the front of protest marches. Coordinadora de Col. Lectius per a´Lliberament Gai (CGAG) wanted transvestites at the front while Front d´Alliberament Gai de Cataluña (FAGC) opposed this. CGAG’s argument was that transexuals were the most visible of other sexual minorities and could draw more attention to their demands. In response to FGAC’s opposition, CGAG organized an alternative demonstration led by transvestites in Barcelona in June 1979. Lesbians involved in these discussions tried to reject such males in their groups as it ran counter to their identities. Some FAGC lesbian militants during the late 1970s and early 1980s were very clear in understanding that the homosexual front group could not address their specific repression. Consequently, they also joined feminist groups like Coordinadora Feminista.

While originally founded as a gay men’s association, FAGC created the first lesbian section in the history of homosexual rights activism, doing so in 1977 after the first pride parade. At the time, there were around 100 gay men to 10 lesbians. These efforts were spearheaded by Maria Giralt, and the group would meet for the first time at Bar Núria. Giralt recruited women from a list of thirty who had provided contact information to FAGC during the march, with ten of the women showing up for the inaugural meeting. Despite stated support from FAGC for their activities, the lesbian section often were forced to accept misogynistic behavior to remain part of the organization; the lesbian section’s programming materials and promotional materials were often covered in phallic symbols despite repeated protests from its members to leadership for this behavior to cease. For a number of lesbians that were part of the initial FAGC lesbian section, such behaviors on the part of gay men pushed many of them into becoming radical feminists.

FAGC organized its first demonstrations a few days after 15 June 1977, the date of the first Spanish general elections in the post Franco era, on 26 June 1977. The goal of that demonstration was to repeal the Law on Danger and Social Rehabilitation. This was Spain’s first Orgullo march. The protest was attended by feminists, gay rights organizations, and neighborhood associations. It took place on Las Ramblas.[21]

There were a number of splits inside FAGC in 1978, which resulted in a number of lesbians leaving the group and re-organizing inside the feminist movement or joining the more libertarian Coordinadora de Col·lectius per l’Alliberament Gai (CCAG). [22]

Lesbians in FAGC like María Giralt in 1978 believed they could overcome the masculinity among and misogyny of gay men. Their solution to this was to build relationships within the feminist movement. Eventually though, their situation became untenable and they left in 1978. For some, this happened at one of the FAGC meetings when lesbians were told they had little cocks.

Lesbians left FAGC in 1978, re-organizing themselves within the feminist movement. This was because of the dominant masculinity infused within the gay rights movement, that was accompanied by misogyny and sexism. This was not compatible with lesbian political goals. Amanda Klein was one of the voices in this period, pointing out this issue including in her critique of Carl Wittman’s Homosexual Manifesto. Wittman said that homosexuals were not oppressors of women because homosexuals know what it is to be oppressed. Klein pointed out that the problem of lesbian oppression during the Franco period was very different than that of transwomen and gay men, because lesbian sexuality was not recognized, and when recognized was also subsidary to the masculine, which made it easier to hide. This had negative economic implications for lesbians, because it made lesbians more economically exploitable because of their sex. While Wittman said lesbians were not oppressed by homosexuals, Klein pointed out gay rights organizations refused to spend the money to make lesbian sexuality more visible and equal to that of men precisely because doing so would have cost them money they did not want to spend. [23]

Grup en Lluita per l’Alliberament de la Lesbiana (GLAL) was formed in November 1978, advocating for lesbianism from a social perspective instead of a political one. The Barcelona based group was one of the lesbian activist groups in Spain in that time period. The group engaged in a number of activities including neighborhood talks, participating in conferences, appearing on the radio and giving interviews to the media, all with the goal of increasing lesbian visibility. In May 1979, they joined the Coordinadora Feminista de Barcelona. GLAL organized International Lesbian Week events in February 1982. The RTVE program Cara a cara had an episode in 1983 in which GLAL participated. GLAL had political divisions regarding their focus and would dissolve a few years after its founding.

Bar-Biblioteca Feminista LaSal Opened in 1977. [24] It was founded by a group of women in China Town by Aurora. Carme Cases, Montse Solà, Sat Sapaté, Maria José Quevedo and Maria Chordà. All would soon become important figures in the city’s feminist movements. The space inside was painted purple. Federica Montseny attended one of its events. Finacial difficulties forced it to close around 1983. During its short existence, it played an important role in lesbian feminist activities. Grup Gram Teatre was created in 1983. It was a lesbian theater group founded by the couple Gretel Ammann and Dolors Majoral in Barcelona. The group gave lesbian actors, both amateur and professional, an opportunity to work collectively with other feminist women independent of men. Their opening performance was at the Barcelona feminist bar, La Sal. The group traveled Spain in a van for a number of years, performing both improvisation and staged pieces.

Daniel’s also served as more than a bar and dance hall for lesbians and other women. Tobar also sponsored women’s basketball teams, football teams and a theater group named Five Stars & the Comet that performed an improv show at the bar called “Sala de espera”. The bar also distributed feminist and lesbian materials, including Spanish feminist magazine called Laberint, later renamed Red de Amazonas, one of the few places to sell the magazine in the whole of the country. Daniels’ also played an important role in bringing a degree of social cohesion to various lesbian communities in the city at the time.

The political party Partit Feminista de Catalunya was formally organized in 1977 by Organització Feminista Revolucionària. They were originally a Leninist Marxist party, but gradually became a feminist Marxist party. They supported the founding of Partido Feminista de España in February 1979, and that year supported the slate Moviment Comunista de Catalunya in the 1979 municipal elections. After failing to create a unified ticket of feminists for the 1980 regional elections, the party backed Bloc d’Esquerra d’Alliberament Nacional, which promoted their platform on women’s rights. They party eventually was renamed and became a state Lesbians have always been highly active in the organization. The Jornades sobre Sexualitat took place in 1979, organized by Partit Feminista.

In 1978, Editorial Lumen owner Ester Tusquets published her work El mismo mar de todos los veranos , with the English language translation titled The Same Sea as Every Summer, the first novel in a trilogy that included El amor es un juego solitario published in English as Love is a Solitary Game, published the following year and Varada tas el último naufragio with the English translated title of Stranded in 1980. They were some of the most important works published in Spain’s second lesbian literary era, discussing the lesbian reality of trying to exist in a heterosexist society. It was also revolutionary for how it discussed female sexuality, doing so in an unprecedented way that was only possible because of the loosening societal constraints and increased demands by women following Franco’s death. Tusquets’s work was also emblematic of political feminist literature in the transition period. This movement at times saw lesbianism as a natural extension of the movement, and it was sometimes reflected in literature produced by feminist writers of the era.

Despite lesbians in Barcelona abandoning the homosexual rights movement in 1978 and moving to the feminist movement, lesbian groups did not immediately appear in the feminist movement.

Grupo de Lucha para la Liberación de la Lesbiana (GLLL) was founded in November 1978. It was very short lived and replaced by Grup de Lluita per l’Alliberament de la Lesbiana (GLAL) in February 1979. The founded of GLAL came from Coordinadora Feminista, FAGC and Institut Lambda. One of the important things about this group was they showed up with a delegation in Madrid at the Ministerio de Cultura and made their organization official. They were one of the first to do so. Some groups of women, dominated or lesbian only, had done so before but had not used lesbian anywhere near their organization names or goals.[25]

Lesbians in the late 1970s had diverse opinions and perspectives. One of those diverse voices was that of separatist lesbianism Gretel Ammann. In 1978, Ammann said, “Lesbianism is not a hobby or an experiment, but a way of living and being. […] Lesbianism, within feminism, or from feminism, becomes a revolutionary ideological current against patriarchal power […]. We are not the same. We can be united, if necessary, against the patriarchal power, but each one for their different reasons. Within feminism, among feminists, there has been a lot of controversy about the problem of “labeling” oneself as a lesbian. Today, in which there is a heterosexual dictatorship, not defining oneself is being heterosexual, and therefore lesbians define themselves as such, apart from making a clear difference from the outset with the general group of women.”

During the 1970s, Gretel Ammann was active in the nascent feminist movement in Barcelona, in peace and disarmament movements, environmental activism and had begun becoming a lesbian political activist. With the death of Franco in November 1975, she was able to become more visible in her activism. By 1976, she had joined Moviment Comunista de Catalunya. She participated in the 27 May 1976 Primeres Jornades Catalanes de la Dona. At the 1979 II Jornadas Estatales sobre la Mujer in Granada, she presented her work Feminismo de la diferencia. The work went on to become important in radical feminist circles in Spain. The following year, she opened Casa de la Dona in Barcelona as a radical feminist and lesbian separatist space. The following year, she created the exclusively lesbian magazine Amazonas. She also participated in the first television program about lesbians in 1981. Ammann founded Centro de Estudios de la Mujer “El Centro” in 1984, which became a central point for feminists in the following years. In 1987, she organized the Primera Semana de Lesbianas de Barcelona, an event that attracted lesbians from across Europe. She founded the magazine Laberint in 1989, which ran for 36 editions before folding in 1999. Ammann died on 2 May 2000 in Barcelona.

Gretel Ammann founded Grupo Amazonas in Barcelona in 1978. [26]

CLB had only about 15 active members in 1979. They knew many more lesbians who could have joined but preferred to remained closeted. CLB members also found that they ran into issues in that feminist groups did not want to work with men in homosexual front groups.

The Jornades Feministes Independents took place in Barcelona in 1979.

Red de Amazonas were one of the exceptions to how lesbian organizations operated in the 1980s. They were critical of the double militancy of lesbian feminists, and critical of the militant feminist movement’s exclusion of lesbians from feminist discourse. In this sense, they were a forerunner to Lesbianas Sin Duda.

Only during the 1980s did feminist first begin to question heterosexuality as a system used to reinforce male patriarchy.

CLB militants tried to vindicate the use of the term lesbiana during the early 1980s as the term was then very loaded and had a pejorative meaning.

Catalan feminism in the early 1980s was often very focused on its specific sphere. Because women from other regions often attended their workshops and conferences, what went on in this sphere often went on to have a national impact.

FAGC faced a double split in the early 1980s as members mobilized in different and conflicting directions. Coordinadora de Col.lectius per a´Lliberament Gai (CCAG) and the lesbians of CLB both left, with the lesbians joining Coordinadora Feminista. For members of CLB, their departure was not unexpected as they had watched similar splits happen in other countries. They had an awareness of them and had thought through the potential implications of doing this within their own national context. They just did not feel that mixed spaces with men were working for them anymore as homosexual women, especially when their militancy was towards issues like legalized abortion and decriminalization of divorce. The internal governing structures of FAGC only highlighted the contradictions between gay men and lesbians, and the power struggle to address both groups within the organization.

The homosexual rights movement and the feminist movement both had the prevailing idea in the early 1980s that in order to challenge heterosexual prejudice towards homosexual, they needed to convey an image of being normal and respectable. Part of their efforts means they did not challenge societally entrenched gender roles. By this time, the image of gays and lesbians had begun to be replaced by that of transvestites. Lesbians and feminists were opposed to this because they viewed transvestites as making womanhood into a caricature. Within FAGC, this created conflicts as there was one group supporting transvestites and another opposing them, with positions shifting after transvestites stepped in and shielded gays and lesbians from the police during the 26 June 1977 march in Barcelona.

International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) announced their plan to hold their meeting in Barcelona in 1980, feminist lesbians took this as a sign to improve their organization. This culminated in the first edition of the Jornadas Estatals de Lesbianas being held in June of that same year. Much of the critique coming out of lesbian feminist circles at that time was the prevailing heterosexism in the feminist movement and about expanding the right to one’s own body on issues like abortion.

The 1983 jornades de Sexualitat were an important moment in the city for the relationship between straight women and lesbians inside the feminist movement inside the city. Straight women wanted to assert that women’s sexuality should be explored in a broader feminist context from with in a heterosexual model.

Grup Gram Teatre was created in 1983. It was a lesbian theater group founded by the couple Gretel Ammann and Dolors Majoral in Barcelona. The group gave lesbian actors, both amateur and professional, an opportunity to work collectively with other feminist women independent of men. Their opening performance was at the Barcelona feminist bar, LaSal. The group traveled Spain in a van for a number of years, performing both improvisation and staged pieces.

By 1983, Spanish lesbian political activity fell into one of three branches, lesbians in the ghetto, lesbian feminists, and lesbians inside homosexual rights organizations.

The 1985 jornadas in Barcelona focused on a number of feminist issues, including the right to legal abortion and decrying the limits placed on women seeking abortions. Among the lesbians participating was Montse Oliván.

Eix Violeta was founded in November 1985, by a group of young women from Santa Coloma de Gramenet. They had links with lesbians and feminists from Valencia and from the Basque country. They went on to organize their first meeting in Barcelona in 1986. The organization became involved with student protests. They were also involved with the 11-day occupation of a building on carrer Font Honrada with the goal of getting a feminist space in the city. They also published a magazine called Revista Mate Lila, which published its last and 6th edition in 1992.

Grup de Lesbianes Feministes de Barcelona was founded in founded in 1986, with around 30 to 40 women regularly participating. Some of the women were members of extra-parliamentary political parties. They would go on to play a critical role in a number of lesbian political issues in the city.

Grup de Lesbianes Feministes de Barcelona (GFLB), located at Carrer de Casp, 3, was founded in 1987 and would play one of the largest roles in lesbian political activity during the 1990s. The group believed it was important for lesbians to build bridges with groups not institutionalized through state support to achieve common goals. This included developing relationships with feminist women not part of organized groups, transsexuals, non-feminist lesbians, queers, and gay men. At the same time, GFLB worked with similar organizations including Red de Amazonas, the state network for feminists in Catalonia. Front d’Alliberament Gai de Catalunya (FAGC), joined the group, launched the Insubmissió Marika campaign in 1997. The following year, Grup de Lesbianes Feministes de Barcelona (GFLB) launched their campaign Un carrer per a les lesbianes to criticize civil marriage in Spain, comparing the inability to for homosexuals to marry is akin to forbidding Spain’s monarchy from ruling the military to fight. They would have approved of the destruction of all three institutions.

La Nostra Illa, located at Carrer de Reig i Bonet, 3, was founded in 1987 and quickly became an important reference point for lesbian feminists in the city. They would go on to create cultural and artistic productions that would challenge heteronormative imaginaries in the city during the 1990s.

Barcelona hosted the Jornadas sobre Lesbianismo in February 1987, with about 300 activists attending from all over Spain. There were some who came from militant feminist groups, some who were independent feminists, and some who were lesbian separatists like Gretel Amman. They also talked about the violence involved in imposing heterosexual rule on lesbians and women.

At the 1987 Jornadas sobre lesbianismo en Barcelona, lesbians criticized the feminist movement for not criticizing heterosexual systems. Instead, they said the feminist movement just accepted lesbians as a sexual option and said homosexuality only needed to be visible in the movement on 28 June.

The 1988 Jornades sobre Lesbianisme was organized by Coordinadora Estatal d’Organitzacions Feministes. A number of relatively controversial and taboo topics were brought up, including pornography, consensual violence, the staging of gender roles through the use of butch and femme identities inside lesbian relationships and sex toys.

Grup de Lesbianes Feministes de Barcelona attended the 3 to 5 June 1988 Madrid hosted Jornades de Lesbianes where they presented a session called De lo que no se dice : Doble vida.

The IV International Feminist Book Fair, with over 300 booksellers, was held in 1990 in Atarazanas Reales de Barcelona. The shipyards, located at Av. de les Drassanes, 1, date to the 13th century. The Baños Orientales had been closed earlier in the year, and in memory of their importance to feminist women and lesbians, “A Night of Mediterranean Music” took place where the Baños Orienteles used to be. The baths would continue in feminist and lesbian historical memory when they were mentioned at the 2013 exhibition Mujeres bajo sospecha. Memoria y sexualidad (1930-1980) at the Ateneo de Madrid organized by UNED sociology professor Raquel Osborne.

Lesbians in the feminist community in Barcelona found that their issues were ignored or relegated in the mid-1990s. Situations that were unique to heterosexual women were treated as if they were applicable to all women, and situations applicable to all women, like intimate partner violence, were treated as if they only happened to heterosexual women. Barcelona lesbian feminists began to feel stigmatized.

L’EIX VIOLETA. Grupo de lesbianas feministas de Barcelona, located at Calle Casp n° 38 principal, were active in 1997.

Cataluña Post-Op, Ex Dones, Ningún Lugar, Guerrilla Travolaka and Girlswholikeporno created the Asamblea Stonewall in 2001. They then went on to host Queeruption in 2005 in Barcelona. These groups calling out to a shared collective global LGBT history in a Catalan context were bollero feminists who were critical of the commercialized nature of Pride in the city.[27]

CLF was still active in 2008. It was one of the few feminist lesbian groups from the early 1980s to survive the decade and the dark period of the 1980s.

Dones i Lesbianes Documentant-se (DILDO) was created in 2009 in Barcelona. They described themselves as distrifeministaqueer, feminist, queer and anti-capitalist. They appear to have disappeared from the city by 2015, and re-emerged in Valencia, were based out of Casa de la Dona at Calle Buenos Aires, 13 and continued to be active in 2021.

LesBiCat is a group of women, including transwomen, who are lesbians, bisexuals or pansexuals in Catalonia who work from a feminist perspective towards social transformation and increased visbility. Most of their activity is based in Barcelona. The group, created around 2011, branched off from Coordinadora LGTB de Catalunya, an organization that dissolved in 2013. They have organized events for the International Lesbian Visibility day in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. They have also organized events for International Bisexual Day in 2015.

Partido Popular did a reform of Spain’s abortion laws in July 2015, requiring girls under the age of 18 to get parental or guardian consent before having an abortion. Feminists, including lesbian feminists and transpeople, took to the streets of Barcelona to protest this change as a backwards step for women’s sexual and reproductive freedom.

The 2016 Radical-mente feministas in Barcelona had two camps, a lesbian feminist camp and a trans feminist camp. It caused endless debates as to who was a woman, wo should be included and how feminism could be included to encompass other realities of real problems for women using a more broadly defined term. Lesbian feminism was criticized for being to white European.

Feminismes i LGTBI+ de Barcelona en Comu mentioned Lesbian Visibility Day on their Twitter account on 26 April 2017, using the Catalan language hashtag #DiaVisibilitatLèsbica.

Dones Lleida, Grup Feminista de Ponent, mentioned Lesbian Visibility Day on their Twitter account on 26 April 2017, using the Catalan language hashtag #DiaVisibilitatLèsbica.

Assemblea Feminista La Filadora del Poblenou mentioned Lesbian Visibility Day on their Twitter account on 26 April 2018, using the Catalan language hashtag #DiaVisibilitatLèsbica.

Cau de Llunes (Assemblea Feminista revolucionària de Tarragona) mentioned Lesbian Visibility Day on their Twitter account on 26 April 2018, using the Catalan language hashtag #DiaVisibilitatLèsbica.

Pride Barcelona 2019 was organized by Asociación Catalana de Empresas para Gays y Lesbianas (ACEGAL). The most high profile lesbian on their organizing committee was Maria Giralt, director at Gayles.tv. Aware of a number of volatile discussions going on in the community, organizers held a number of activities to address these issues like lesbian invisibility inside the rainbow, the issue of racism by LGBT activists and the gentrification of barrios where working class LGBT people congregated. The talk on lesbian visibility promised to bring the feminist perspective to the lesbian perspective as the two are viewed as being intrinsically connected.

espurnafeminista at Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona mentioned Lesbian Visibility Day on their Twitter account on 26 April 2020, using the Catalan language hashtag #DiaVisibilitatLèsbica.

Joventut Comunista, Feminismes amb Iniciativa, CRAI Biblioteca de Belles Arts – Universitat de Barcelona, Acció Jove – Joves CCOO, FLG Famílies LGTBI, Sororitrans, Biblioteques de Barcelona, Arran and Centre LGTBI de Barcelona mentioned Lesbian Visibility Day on their Twitter account on 26 April 2021, using the Catalan language hashtag #DiaVisibilitatLèsbica.

On 13 July 2022, an erotic shop held a workshop on sexual consent and pleasure between women that was lesbotransfeminist in perspective.[28]

Extremadura

Lesbians were involved in the feminist movement in the Caceres likely by the late 1970s, though these lesbians were likely heavily closeted, and avoided dual militancy that often homophobic feminist organizations at that time tended to ask of members. Lesbianism as a topic, based on the experiences of lesbians elsewhere, likely would rarely have come up in meetings or in discussions among other members. Their political goals during the transition would have in support of legal equality, making the Spanish Constitution feminist, repeal of certain laws, and making divorce, contraceptives and abortion legal. While lesbian feminist groups were being created elsewhere in Spain as early as 1977, the broader Extremadura situation suggests that the first lesbian feminist group in Extremadura was not founded until the late 1980s in Cáceres and other than the fact that at least a handful of women were involved in the group, documentation remains scarce.

The lack of information in a homosexual context sits across another information void. Across Spain, many lesbians did not necessarily have an explicitly lesbian identity during the 1980s and 1990s. Instead, their identity was that of a feminist, discussing their lesbianism within this context at national and regional institutional feminist jornadas. The major exceptions to the trend appear to be Extremadura, the Balearic Islands, Melilla and Ceuta.

The annual caravana de mujeres, a movement started around 1990 intended to bring women to more rural parts of Spain to find male partners to help keep rural parts of Spain populated, was being criticized by the 2010s across Spain. In 2015, one such Caravan was scheduled to leave from Madrid on 18 April, taking 55 single women for the the price of €50 including transport, lunch, dinner and a trip to a discoteca and at Hotel Romero de Mérida. The trip was criticized by a number of groups in Extremadura, including Instituto de la Mujer de Extremadura (IMEX), Asociación Malvaluna and Fundación Triángulo. It was a topic where feminists and the LGBT community were united in opposition, even if their rationales for doing so were different.

Extremadura Entiende was founded in 2008 in Mérida as an association for lesbians, transpeople and bisexual women in Extremadura to give LGBT women their own space. Sisi Cáceres Rojo was the association’s president in 2019, having been first elected in 2015. Pilar Milanés Milanés was the president in 2020. At the time, most of the members were white and either lesbian or bisexual, with few transwomen members. They had been working to try to change that for a few years In 2019, the association was looking to expand and add a physical presence in Cáceres and eventually did so, while also closing its space in Merida. The group had engaged in programming in secondary schools to try to combat hatred against LGBT people. They had also become a member of FELGTB. The group had worked with Asamblea Feminista de Cáceres since at least 2015. The group is part of Spanish fourth wave feminism.

Orgullo continued to take place across the major cities in Extremadura. Lesbians, lesbian organizations and feminist organizations participated in Orgullo in the region but there appeared to be very little lesbian centric content at Orgullo, Cáceres celebrated Orgullo in 2012 on 28 June at the Foro de los Balbos. The march was organized by Extremadura Entiende and Fundación Triángulo Extremadura. The motto for the march was “Matrimonio Igualitario. Igualdad sin recortes”, the same one in Madrid as Extremadura Entiende followed the lead of FELGTB. This was chosen after the Tribunal Constitucional ruled that love between two men or two women in Spain expressed through marriage is constitutional. This was celebrated nationwide, including in Extremadura.

Fundación Triángulo and Extremadura Entiende held a press conference in June 2015 in Mérida to ask the government to develop a framework to fight LGBTphobia. Orgullo 2015 Extremadura in Mérida had the motto, “Por la igualdad real ya”. It was organized by Extremadura Entiende. The poster for the event featured Pedro Zerolo who had died not long before. Extremadura Entiende had worked with Asamblea Feminista de Cáceres since at least 2015. The group is part of Spanish fourth wave feminism. The general assembly of Extremadura Entiende was held in the town on 24 October 2015, and Sisi Cáceres Rojo was selected as the new president of the organization. At the same meeting, Marisa González Galán was elected as vice president, María del Carmen Martínez Viloria was elected secretary, and Ana Carmen Fraile Tejedor was elected treasurer. The positions were for two years.

More conferences about lesbians or near lesbian space were organized in Extremadura in 2017. Fundación Triángulo organized a conference in 2017 to coincide with International Women’s Labor Day in Badajoz titled “Las mujeres y la igualdad LGTBI” that ran from 8 to 11 March. It was held on the campus of the Universidad de Extremadura in the building of the Facultad de Educación. Among the attendees were Asamblea Nacional de Venezuela deputy Tamara Adrián and Peruvian activisist and Articulación de Lesbianas Feministas member Marivel Saldaña. The conference had no lesbian specific discussion. Lesbians were always included alongside transsexuals and bisexual women. At the end of 2017, Mérida hosted the VI Encuentro Estatal de Familias de Lesbianas, Gais, Bisexuales y Transexuales con hijas e hijos. The conference was organized by the Familias LGBTI group in Fundación Triángulo.

Comisión 19M, Extremadura Entiende, Euforia, Fundación Triángulo all condemned feminism that excluded transwomen from them in a series of questions appearing on Euforia’s website on 17 May 2020 in honor of International Day against LGTBIQphobia, accusing women who believed in the reality of biological sex of supporting transphobia, upholding patriachial norms and reducing women to their biological functions. None of the organizations mentioned lesbians or homosexuals as part of the LGTBIQ+ despite being asked about in relation to TERFs, and none specifically supported lesbians rights to be exclusively same-sex attracted.

Mujeres LTB – Feminismo y Sororidad was an event organized In December 2020 by Extremadura Entiende and FELGTB with support from the Junta de Extremadura. While women were the focus, much of the conversation focused on how feminism could include transwomen. Lesbians were never addressed as a separate class inside the rainbow, and all presenters were lesbians who included transwomen in their definitions of lesbians. Introductory material did specifically reference transwomen as a class, and their specific persecution as women.

Pilar Milanés Milanés was the president of Extremadura Entiende in 2020. At the time, most of the members were white and either lesbian or bisexual, with few transwomen members. They had been unsuccessfully working to try to change that for a few years, with the lesbian dominant LBT group taking an explicitly queer feminist approach that included transwomen in their sexual orientation.

Feministas Lesbianas Extremadura became active on social media in March 2022. Their founding came at a time when most of the dominant lesbian narrative in the region had stopped being intertwined with the broader LGTB and homosexual rights community for around tend years, and instead had lesbians politically grouped as LBT women where lesbian political, social and cultural interests were viewed as being intrinsically intertwined with those of transwomen because state institutions viewed lesbians and transwomen as institutionally both the same type of woman. This represented a divergence from that narrative, and follows a slow but similar trend of LGB people in Spain trying to separate themselves politically from gender identity politics and the broader transgender community. Most of this activity though occurred elsewhere in Spain, and was previously almost entirely invisible in the region of Extremadura.

Galicia

II Encuentro de Feministas Independientes took place in Vigo in 1981. A meeting of feminists was held in Vigo in 1981. It was inspired by the success of the state meeting of feminists in Granada in 1981.

Colectivo de Feministas Lesbianas was founded in Galicia in 1985.

Asociación Galega da Muller had integrated in a Comisión de Lesbianas by 1987, and it was the largest and most important lesbian group in Galicia in the late 1980s. The organization itself was founded by 50 women in 1976 following Franco’s death and joined the major national feminist organization. It was initially based in Santiago de la Compostela. The organization split two years later. Asociación Galega da Muller would see a number of organizations emerge from it, including Coordinadora Feminista de Vigo and Asociación Democrática da Muller Galega.

Santiago de Compostela hosted a conference against violencia machista in 1988. This conference brought up some of the difference between feminist lesbians and feminists around the issues of sexuality, prostitution and pornography. It was symbolic of other rifts that were beginning to happen within the movement as some lesbians began again to move more towards gay men and what soon became queer feminism.

One of the topics brought up by CFLM in the late 1980s was the topic of lesbian fantasies. One of the places they brought up this topic was at the Jornadas Feministas contra la Violencia Machista de Santiago in 1988, where they presented a paper titled, “El deseo de las demás es cutre, amigas mías, el mío no”.[29]

Jornadas feministas contra la violencia machista took place in December 1988 in Santiago de Compostela. It included members of CFLM, but not as representatives of the organization. They held a session called “El deseo de las demás es cutre, amigas, el mío no” that defended erotic fantasies between lesbians, along with sadomaschostic lesbian relationships. Gretel Amman criticized the presentation in Laberint. [30]

Nanina Santos Castroviejo, a member of Asociación Galega de la Mujer (Santiago de Compostela) , did a presentation titled, “De la inopia del sueño y del excitante peligro de todo despertar” at the III Jornadas Estatales de Lesbianas in Madrid in June 1988.

The 1989 national jornadas de feminismo took place in Santiago de Compostela. The issue of sexuality was raised, along with the topic of the contradiction between pleasure and danger. Among the lesbians participating was Montse Oliván.

Two important lesbian gatherings took place in Galicia in 1995. These meetings gathered lesbian feminists together to discuss their thoughts and discuss plans of action.

Rosa Peris was the director of the national Instituto de la Mujer from May 1999 to 2009. She was replaced by Galician Laura Seara in what was described as an administrative change. Peris was credited with bringing in more diverse voices to the institutional feminism in Spain, including young voices, supporting NGOs in other countries and taking to the streets with feminist activists in defense of women’s rights. Laura Seara held the role until 2011, when a new Partido Popular government came to power.

Ana García was born in A Coruña in 1988. She came out of the closet at 17, with the realization answering several questions that had plagued her throughout her childhood. She was bullied some after that in her hometown. When she was a 20-year-old, she moved to Madrid to get away from the repressive environment in Galicia. At that point, she also decided that she was actually non-binary at a time when the term did not even exist, and soon informed others in her life about being non-binary though she did not care much about pronouns as she did not view them as defining herself. At the time, it was not something widely discussed by the media. García then started reading more about feminism and queer theory. After that, she stopped identifying as a lesbian and began to identify as a bollera but spiritually as queer. She also said she now viewed her sexual orientation as bisexual. Her relationship with her father remains broken as he has not been able to accept her sexuality.

Cuerpos de producción. Miradas críticas y relatos feministas en torno a los sujetos sexuados en los espacios públicos, a jornada organized by Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (CGAC) took place in Santiago de Compostela in 2002.[31]

A lesbian couple were asked to leave Café Royale, a night club, in June 2017 for kissing each other. At the time the lesbians had been publicly kissing in the establishment, heterosexual couples had been doing the same and were left alone by the proprietors. Plataforma Feminista Galega subsequently published a manifesto in support of the women on 12 June 2017, highlighting how such acts were a form of violence against the LGTBQI community because they reinforced heteropatriarchy.[32]

La Rioja

The seeds of lesbian militancy in the Franco period originated in the feminist and homosexual rights activist communities. [33] The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir and The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan were translated into Spanish in 1964, and began circulating underground within Spain and La Rioja.[34]

Despite the small size of the region and the existence of the Francoist state, visible feminist activity took place during the early 1970s in La Rioja. This group would likely have included lesbians, though the research on this topic does not explicitly mention them. These feminists were found organizing in the textile, canning and footwear industries, and they were able to effect legislative change in this period. Asociación de Mujeres Juristas was founded in Logroño in 1971, and was one of the first feminist organizations founded in the city; they were founded as a clandestine organization and did not become publicly visible until after Franco’s death. Two years later, Asociación de Mujeres separadas legalmente became the second feminist organization founded in Logroño. Then in 1974, Movimiento Democrático de la Mujer-Movimiento de Liberación de la Mujer was founded. The fourth major feminist organization in this period to be founded was Seminario Colectivo Feminista, founded in 1975. The last on the scene was Asociación Feminista de La Rioja, founded in March 1979. They did not become visible in broader La Rioja society until after Franco’s death. None of these groups were explicitly about lesbians, but their feminist nature and lack of connection for most lesbian women to the nascent Spanish homosexual rights movement means that lesbians in La Rioja likely would have been attracted to these organizations based on historical patterns. The experiences of these feminist groups prepared them for the death of Franco in November 1975, enabling them to integrate into left-wing politics in the immediate transition period. Despite their successes though, not all left-wing groups wanted these women resulting in some of these transition era feminists feeling marginalized inside these groups. It was these feelings of marginalization that often drove women to organize independently as feminist groups in La Rioja during the late 1970s. [35]

Like the late Franco period, the more activist lesbian experience in La Rioja during the transition has to mostly be viewed through the history of the La Rioja feminist movement. This idea is supported by scholars from the region who have investigated lesbian life in later periods, and were provided with experiences of older lesbians during this period.

The feminist community in La Rioja was networked to a certain degree into the national feminist movement. This was in part because of their location relative to other provinces, a situation that was not the same in other regions like Extremadura, Ceuta, Melilla and the Canary Islands where some feminist movements were much more insular. The Primeras Jornadas Nacionales por la Liberación de la Mujer took place between 6 and 8 December 1975 in Madrid at Colegio Montpellier, with around 500 women participating. The event was constituted in 1974 by the Secretariado de Organizaciones No Gubernamentales, who held meetings and coordinated activities in different parts of Spain including in Barcelona, Valencia, Santander, Malaga, Alicante and Valladolid. Ahead of the December 1975 event, the held a smaller one in Madrid, attended by 80 women from cities and regions that included Albacete, Alicante, Barcelona, Galicia, Logroño, Madrid, Málaga, Oviedo, Santander, Seville, Valencia and Valladolid. These meetings would give rise to the feminist movement in the post-Franco period and be a launching point from which some early lesbian activists would emerge; none of the names of these lesbians later written in history books came from La Rioja.[36]

One of the most important feminist organizations to emerge in the transition period was Asociación Feminista de La Rioja (AFR). The group, founded in Logroñp in early 1979 in either February or March, was linked to left-wing political parts and Colegio Universitario de Logroño (CULO). The group had a membership of around ninety women who came from across the political divide, despite their left-wing origins, and included left-wing militants, women from Christian groups and women from neighborhood associations. It is likely the group attracted lesbian members, even if those members were heavily closeted. Lesbianism as a topic, based on the experiences of lesbians elsewhere, likely would rarely have come up in meetings or in discussions among other members. The general political goals of feminist groups during the transition would have been in support of legal equality, making the Spanish Constitution feminist, repeal of certain laws, and making divorce, contraceptives and abortion legal. [37]

It was at CULO that AFR and Asociación de Amigos de La Rioja would celebrate the Primeras Jornadas de la Mujer Riojana in February 1979. One of the group’s first demands was that women manage Centros de Información Sexual for other women. This interest in female sexuality led AFR and Empar Pineda to hosting the Primeras Jornadas Feministas sobre la sexualidad on 5 May 1981. Topics covered at the conference included free sexuality, contraception, homosexuality, lesbianism, and the impact rape and sexual aggression of the practice’s female victims. The group’s other major focus was on abortion rights, especially as they were disappointed in PSOE’s position not being very progressive. They used a number of slogans in support of abortion rights including, “Sexuality is not motherhood”, “If the Pope got pregnant, abortion would be sacred”.[38]

Despite their frequent hesitation to talk about lesbianism and even more rarely so using pictures, it was from the feminist movement and AFR that the first celebration of Pride would take place in La Rioja. Asociación Feminista Riojana held a conference on 28 June 1981 to raise awareness of homosexual rights and lesbians in honor of Orgullo, then called Día Internacional Para la Liberación de Homosexuales y Lesbianas. This appears to have been a one-off event that was not repeated in subsequent years. The next documented Orgullo event to happen in La Rioja was also organized by AFR in June 1987 with a talk titled, “Lesbianas ¿por qué no?” at Sala de Cultura Gonzalo de Berceo. The 25 June 1987 talk featured a speaker from the Colectivo de Lesbianas Feminists de Madrid. The poster for the event featured two naked women embracing.[39]

The end of the transition and the start of the 1980s saw an increase in small increase visible lesbian activism in La Rioja, separate from the broader feminist community in the region for the first time. This did not necessarily translate into improvements in the everyday lives of lesbians in La Rioja during this period. For some lesbians who came of age in the 1980s and 1990s, they did not even understand what a lesbian was because the topic was discussed so infrequently.[40]

Despite that lack of knowledge, lesbian activism began. The Colectivo de Feministas Lesbianas was expanding across Spain between 1980 to 1985 after having its first branch founded in Madrid in 1980. A short-lived branch called Colectivo de Feministas Lesbianas de La Rioja was founded in Logroño in 1985, but its impact appears to have been marginal and it is not mentioned much except in broader histories of Spanish lesbianism as having existed. They did produce a magazine called Bailas. Grupo de Lesbianas de La Rioja attended the 1987 Madrid hosted Jornadas de Lesbianas held from 3 to 5 June where they presented a session called Lesbiana provinciana busca novia. It was from the feminist lesbian movement that proto-queer theory would first emerge on the scene in Spain, injected into the broader feminist community by these lesbian activists who were seeking to deconstruct gender. [41]

Male violence was also an issue in the region in the 1980s that feminists and others were keen to draw attention to. The Asociaion Feminista de La Rioja convened a manifestacion against rape against women on 1 December 1985 at Glorieta del Doctor Zubía. They were supposed by CRIPAZ, ERA-AT, M.C.R., M.O.C., J.O.C., C.I.O., Asociación Gitano, A.P.I.R., Grupo de Homosexuales y Lesbianas, ACESUR and EXODO. Marchers urged women to denounce their attackers and to not be silent in the face of such abuse.[42]

Activism, either from feminists or lesbians, did not end homophobia in the region in the 1980s. Iberpop was held in Logroño in 1984. One of the posters promoting the event featured an opposite-sex couple kissing. The woman had short hair and was not wearing earrings. The president of the Tribunal Tutelar de Menores filed a complaint, saying the poster promoted homosexuality. Ultimately, the court refused to process the complaint but the fact that a complaint had been filed attracted national attention. The complaint highlighted the homophobic atmosphere in the city at the time.[43]

The 1990s were another period of limited visibility and activism in the region. Most lesbian feminist organizations in Spain continued to cling to their existence, including the La Rioja lesbian feminist collective Bailas about whom little is known in this period. In the bordering Basque Country, all lesbian feminist groups disappeared in this period, leaving Bailas relatively isolated regionally as Basque lesbians appeared to be somewhat influential among La Riojan lesbian feminists. Despite the situation in both La Rioja and the Basque Country, lesbian feminists from both regions attended the 1997 Jornadas de Lesbianas Feministas that took place in Bilbao. Beyond these regions, lesbian feminists also came from Córdoba, Oviedo, Gijón, Torrelavega, Salamanca, Santiago de Compostela, Pamplona, Madrid, Murcia, Valencia and Barcelona to participate.

GYLDA was founded on 13 December 1995 in Logroño. The association had a lot of early ties to the feminism association. One of the major focuses of the group early one was prioritizing making the LGTB community more visible and fighting for their rights. At the same time, they also were committed to preventing the spread of HIV / AIDS and STDs more generally. They would go on to play an important role in HIV / AIDS prevention in the region.[44]

The majority of lesbians in La Rioja in the 2010s claimed to be feminists, though to varying degrees. Their relationship with the movement though has issues because they often did not believe the feminist movement prioritized their needs. One of the main benefits many saw of feminism was that it challenged gender norms of masculine and feminine, which in turn leads to questions about heterosexuality which is an issue centric to lesbian sexuality. [45]

GYLDA played a leading role in lesbian activism until 2014, when Marea Arcoíris and other LGTB groups were founded in the region.[46] Nenazas is a transfeminist youth collective that has been around since November 2015. They are not lesbian, but trans. Some of their members identify as lesbians, and they have played an important role in some parts of La Rioja lesbian life in the sense that they are one of the few LGTB type organizations in the region. While the organizations believes transwomen are women, they also advocate on issues that are often specific to the interests of women, including sexual assault against women and girls, and the sexualization of young girls in society.[47]

Two members of Marea Arco Iris filed a complaint at the Jefatura Superior de la Policía Nacional against Mujeres en Rebeldía in September 2016, alleging several women uttered homophobic slurs at the during the Fiestas de la Vendimia at the Punto Feminista that took place in Plaza Amós Salvador. The group rejected the complaint, saying the slurs were actually uttered by members of the local police who were in the same space at the time. Mujeres en Rebeldía said it was a structural problem of the police and local town hall in refusing to assess structural and systemic problems of heteropatriarchy inside their organizations.

Feminists in La Rioja in the late 2010s faced discrimination from very conservative members of La Rioja who viewed their activities as a result of them being unable to get a boyfriend and turning to women instead. Mujeres en rebeldía gathered on 8 March 2019 at the Concatedral Santa María la Redonda for the International Women’s Labor Day protest. They had a banner they put across the facade of the building that read, “Os beberéis la sangre de nuestros abortos” which means “You will drink the blood of our abortions.” It was later removed at the same time that the manifestation called by UGT, CCOO, USO and STE-Rioja started at the plaza del Mercado.

Logroño born Madrid Vox Congreso de Diputados member Alicia Rubio attended a Vox event in Madrid in November 2019. Phrases attributed to her at the event by nuevecuatrouno included, “Feminism no longer defends women, only lesbians,” “Feminism has lost its way since it began to hate men,” and “Current feminism hates men. It no longer seeks for women to be like men, but to eliminate them.”[49]

Coordinadora del 8-M is the organizer of the International Women’s Labor Day March in Logroño. On 6 March 2020, ahead of their march in discussions with the media, organization representative María Pérez Fajardo said, “We come back because they don’t want us to go out on the street or dance; we come back because they don’t want us to be seen, they don’t want us to be heard, because they want us to shut up and not make noise; we return because the street, the public and the visible is also ours; we return because patriarchy is fought with feminism; we come back because twenty-year-old boys think they can do whatever they want with a fifteen-year-old girl and then go home and play Parcheesi; because of the wage gap; by rationalized women, lesbians, migrants, with functional diversity…”. The march started on 8 March 2020 at the fuente de las ‘Espaldas Mojadas’. It was preceded by an opportunity for marchers to make their own posters at colegio Madre de Dios earlier in the day.[50]

The Evaluación del Bachillerato para el Acceso a la Universidad (EBAU) in La Rioja took place in the first week of June 2022 in Logroño and Calahorra; the students were the first in Spain to take these exams. Among the questions in the literature section were two texts, with students able to chose either one about feminism or one about the war in Ukraine. The feminist text was by the recently deceased novelist Almudena Grandes. This feminist text spoke about the gender identity of female sexuality. The theoretical section of the literature also had a section where students had the choice to respond about poetry in the 1960s or the theatrical work of Federico García Lorca, one of Spain’s greatest writers who was killed by the Franco regime in part because he was a homosexual. Plataforma Trans, ARTRA and Marea Arco Iris sent a letter to the Consejería de Educación, Cultura, Deporte y Juventud de La Rioja in response to the text, complaining that the text stated that transgender rights are contrary to women’s rights. Their letter stated this issue was a hoax, absolutely false and done “with the aim of stigmatizing and criminalizing one of the most vulnerable groups in society”. The letter stated the exam question violated the Law of Equality because the question “go[es] against its principles of guarantee of rights and protection against discrimination, is to attack democracy and impose a debate from ideological positions in which trans identities are denied, the principle of equality and the stigma is perpetuated.” They demanded the immediate withdraw of the text from the exam because it could be in subject to sanction for being an infraction against the Ley Trans de la Rioja. On social media, there was a mixed response from the left to the text and the response by LGTB organizations; there were trans allies who were very unhappy about this question but there were also members of the LGB community and the radical and abolitionist feminist community who did not see any issue with the text.[51]

Madrid

In August 1901, Carmen de Burgos left her husband; she took her daughter María de los Dolores Ramona Isabel Álvarez de Burgos, who was born in 1895, to live in Madrid. Her early time in the city was spent in the home of her uncle Senator Agustín de Burgos y Cañizares. After disagreements with him, she moved out. By 1903, de Burgos would become the first recognized female journalist in Spain, working for the Madrid based Diario Universal. Writing as a columnist, she campaigned for a number of feminist issues, including the legalization of divorce. She left Madrid in 1905, traveling to France, Italy and Monaco to study how the educational systems worked in those countries.

Círculo Sáfico de Madrid came into existence around 1916, existed during the 1920s and came to an end around the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Victorina Durán was the primary organizer and leader of the group. The founding of the group may have been inspired by similar ones that were already in existence in London and Paris. While the word lesbiana had entered the Spanish language by 1870 and was interchangeable with “sáfica” y “sadismo”, it was not a word that lesbians in this period in Madrid could safely use in Madrid society to describe themselves. Hence, the word Sapphic was used instead; it gave credibility because it drew on the historical works of a well-known Greek writer.

The group came out of feminist circles in the city, specifically Residencia de Señoritas and Lyceum Club Femenino. The name of the group was chosen by its founder, Victorina Durán, to denote it as a network of intellectual women. It played an important social and cultural role for members of a minority group. Despite the group having a name, members did not have any nickname for themselves, nor did they view themselves as part of a dissident culture. Instead, members viewed themselves as intellectuals and women who just happened to be united by their interest in women. Their network enabled them to navigate the complexities of living in a modern city. [52]

Many members held or would later hold high level positions in Spanish society. Victoria Kent would be one of the first of three women in the Congreso de Diputados and be appointed the director general of prisons in the Second Republic, Matilde Calvo was a teacher at the Escuela del Hogar de Mujeres, and Victorina Durán was the cátedra of indumentaria at the Real Conservatorio de Música y Declamación de Madrid. Most of the members were heavily closeted, with their relationships only being known after they went into exile following the end of the Spanish Civil War or following their deaths. Victoria Kent said and wrote little on the topic. Founder Victorina Duran being so publicly out was a rarity for its time. Relationships existed between members, who either met through the group, similar feminist groups or through publishing. One such relationship was between Matilde Ras and Elena Fortún.[53]

Members of the group sometimes met in Paris, gathering at Rue Monsieur Le Prince in the city and visiting places like the Casino de Paris and Folies Bergère. Paris was an ideal location as many were keen to travel, to get out of what they saw was a culturally backward country. France, and Paris specifically, allowed them to escape the oppressive conservative environment that was Madrid. Members attending Paris meetings included Margarita Ruiz de Lihory y Resino and Victorina Durán. One meeting took place in 1924. It was in Paris that Spanish lesbians would also come into contact with other lesbians and feminists like Djuna Barnes, Natalie Clifford Barney, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Janet Flanner and Sylvia Beach; they would bring these ideas back to Madrid and other organizations they belonged to in the city. They were often held on an annual basis.

It is in the final years of Franco’s life that any sort of homosexual activism begins to take place. Before Madrid had its first pride march, militant lesbian feminists and some male homosexuals had marched a few times during the early 1970s. They did this in Madrid on Calle Preciados on 28 June in honor of the Stonewall uprising and Christopher Street Liberation Day, with the numbers of marchers ranging between fifty and eighty. Among the lesbians to attend these early marches during the dictatorship was Vito Virtudes. The participants took great risks to do so and homosexuality was a criminal offense and lesbians could find themselves sent off to correctional institutions. Many of these lesbians were at the bottom of society and had nowhere else to go, a situation that gay men did not face in the same way. The marches were mostly organized at the dark and underground lesbian bar, Berliner. Marginalization by society gave these women the courage and the ability to speak out as they had nothing else to lose. The Franco regime had done all it could to make these women invisible, first because of their sex and second because of their same-sex attraction. When they became visible, they received sex specific punishment, different than their gay male counterparts. Gay men were repressed using legislative and penitentiary tools while lesbians were repressed using cultural, religious, psychiatric and medical institutions to try to domesticate them.[54]

It is in the final years of Franco’s life that any sort of homosexual activism begins to take place. Before Madrid had its first pride march, militant lesbian feminists and some male homosexuals had marched a few times during the early 1970s. They did so on 28 June, with numbers ranging between 50 and 80. They took great risks to do so and homosexuality was a criminal offense. Many of these women were at the bottom of society and had nowhere else to go, a situation that gay men did not face in the same way. These were often organized at the dark and underground lesbian bar, Berliner. One such march took place on calle Preciados. Marginalization by society gave these women the courage and the ability to speak out as they had nothing else to lose. The Franco regime had done all it could to make these women invisible, first because of their sex and second because of their same-sex attraction. When they became visible, they received sex specific punishment, different than their gay male counterparts. Gay men were repressed using legislative and penitentiary tools while lesbians were repressed using cultural, religious, psychiatric and medical institutions to try to domesticate them.[55]

Vindicacion Feminista was a magazine founded in July 1976 by Carmen Alcalde and Lidia Falcón, and initially printed and sold in Madrid. Over the course of three years, they would produce 29 editions. The feminist publication was one of the more frequent one to address the existence and needs of lesbians. Issue number 22 published on 1 April 1978 and sold for 100 pesetas featured lesbians on the cover, with an article by Regina Bay Falcon.[56]

In the final days of the dictatorship and, the word gay rarely ever appeared, let alone the word lesbian, because homosexuality was still viewed as representing a “social danger” to society. When there was any respectful discussion of gays and lesbians, the word homosexual was used instead. Early media discussion in the very immediate post-Franco period still saw homosexuality as a medical or psychological issue. If the media viewed homosexuals as having any rights limited in their reporting as a result of the current laws, it was the basic human rights of gays and lesbians. Their civil, social and political rights were not considered. The Spanish media also failed to make any distinction between sexual orientation and sexual politics. Lesbians were assimilated into reporting on feminism, and all feminists were suspected of being lesbians. Hence, media coverage of early pride events was limited and biased. More reliable sources are firsthand accounts, which are harder to come by.

Some feminist groups in the early transition period sought to explain lesbian behavior among some women. One explanation was that some women saw themselves as inferior, and had sexual relations with other women because of their perceived inferior status. Once women were liberated, these feminists believed sex between women would end because they saw this sex as a result of social inequality. One organization that put forth this idea was Movimiento Democrático de Mujeres (MDM). Asociación Universitaria para el Estudio de los Problemas de la Mujer (AUPEPM) also believed this, but also advocated for legal changes because they believed existing laws did not do enough to combat this and legal solutions needed to be created to address this behavior.

The first “official” pride march in Madrid took place on 25 June 1977, about 18 months after Franco’s death and not long after the Barcelona march. Empar Pineda Erdozia participated, holding a banner at the during the march. Radical feminists and lesbians were part of the march. Despite a desire for visibility, many were fearful of misogyny and stayed at the middle or back of the march. Pineda was one of the cofounders of Colectivo de Feministas Lesbianas de Madrid. She was also the first lesbian to identify herself as such in an interview with Interviú magazine in 1980. Pineda is butch, and was teased mercilessly as a child for appearing to be so.

A feminist bookstore opened in Madrid in 1978.

FLHOC’s 1978 mission statement acknowledged that lesbians should be integrated into both the homosexual rights movement and the feminist movement. It said, “They must fight simultaneously on two fronts: in the feminist groups – in as much as the marginalization of women reaches equal to heteros and homosexuals – and in the groups of homosexual liberation – in intimate union with homosexuals masculine – to overcome the prevailing macho scheme in our culture. Lesbians – as well as male homosexuals – of the FLHOC, we demand that women’s liberation movements assume in its entirety the problem of homosexuality”

Asamblea Feminista de Madrid was created in the 1980s in the city from a number of groups including Comisión Anti-Agresiones, Comisión Pro-Derecho al Aborto, Colectivo de Lesbianas de Madrid, and Coordinadora de Grupos de Mujeres de Barrios y Pueblos de Madrid.[58]

International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) announced their plan to hold their meeting in Barcelona in 1980, feminist lesbians took this as a sign to improve their organization. This culminated in the first edition of the I Jornadas Estatals de Lesbianas being held in June of that same year in Madrid. Much of the critique coming out of lesbian feminist circles at that time was the prevailing heterosexism in the feminist movement and about expanding the right to one’s own body on issues like abortion. The jornada had two general goals. The first was to create space between lesbians and feminists, and the second was to clearly define lesbian discourse.

Colectivo de Feministas Lesbianas de Madrid (CFLM) was created in 1980 at a time when lesbians were beginning to shift away from feminist groups as feminist groups were not considering their needs. Its origins actually date back to 1977 when they were organized more informally. It was cofounded by Empar Pineda Erdozia, Cristina Garaizabal and Montse Oliván almost immediately after Pineda and other lesbian feminists participated in a march down Gran Vía in 1980 in defense of abortion rights following Civil Guard going after women at the Los Naranjos family planning center in Sevilla. The marching women did not have permission, and cut traffic in protest. The event also resulted in the creation of the Comisión Pro Derecho al Aborto. The group was greatly concerned with increasing the visibility of lesbians in western culture and Spanish culture in particular. During the early 1980s, it had at its core membership around 30 to 40 women. At the time, the women faced opposition from other lesbians who did not understand the need to self-organize around sexual orientation. The group soon faced challenges of lesbophobia from feminist groups, and opposition from feminist groups who did not want to address sexual freedom during the Spanish transition period.

During the 1980s, there was some debate among lesbians in Madrid as to if lesbians were women. This debate took part in an atmosphere where lesbian activists were reading Monique Wittig and Adrienne Rich among others, while trying to contextualize their own experiences against the backdrop of historical Francoism. It was partly from these debates that some lesbians would begin to include transsexual women in their spaces as they saw them as part of the feminist struggle. CFLM was one of the major lesbian groups pushing the latter concept in Spain.[59]

CFLM took a position in the early and mid-1980s that lesbianism was just one more issue that women needed to address, on par with dealing with issues like abortion, divorce, and equal rights in the workplace and in education. CFLM would focus almost exclusively on feminist goals until the end of the 1980s. Most members identified first as females and then as lesbians. [60]

Lesbians split off from FLHOC in 1981, creating the Colectivo de Feministas Lesbianas de Madrid (CFLM). FLHOC disappeared in 1983, after being inactive for a while beforehand.[61]

Encuentros Feministas Estatales por el Derecho al aborto took place in 1981 in Madrid.

II Jornadas feministas estatales took place in Madrid in 1981 with a slogan of “Derecho al aborto. Nosotras decidimos”. It led to the creation of the comisiones pro-derecho al aborto around the country. The event was organized by the Coordinadora Estatal de Organizaciones Feministas. It took place on the campus of UCM.[62]

The Colective de Feministas Lesbianas de Madrid (CFLM) and the Frente de Liberacion Homosexual de Castilla (FLHOC) held an authorized Orgullo march on 25 June 1981 in Portazgo. The march in 1981 included lesbian chanting, “no hay liberación de la lesbiana sin liberación de la mujer”. Around 1,000 people participated. Some women marchers wore shirts that said things like, “Mujeres lucha por tus derechos” with the fist sign in the center of the circle representing the female symbol.

Following the successful repeal of the Ley de Peligrosidad y Rehabilitación Social late in 1979, the number of pride attendees dropped in Madrid in 1979 and in 1980. By 1980, there were only about 600 participants in the march. Starting around the time González took power, politically active lesbians who had joined forced with Spain’s feminists were one of the driving forces in keep Pride celebrations going in Madrid. Lesbians would continue to be at the forefront of organizing Pride well into the late 1980s and early 1990s. Participation in Madrid Pride events would continue to be in the hundreds for the rest of the decade. Despite this, lesbians pushed boundaries and organize marches in the city, moving the protest from centro to Vallecas where they thought getting a permit would be easier. The Colective de Feministas Lesbianas de Madrid (CFLM) and the Frente de Liberacion Homosexual de Castilla (FLHOC) held an authorized Orgullo march on 25 June 1981 in Portazgo. The march in 1981 included lesbian chanting, “no hay liberación de la lesbiana sin liberación de la mujer”. The 1982 Madrid pride protest took place in Vallecas, running along the Puente de Vallecas-Avenida de la Albufera-Portazgo axis. The 25 June 1982 march was convened by Colectivo de Feministas Lesbianas de Madrid and FLHOC. About 300 people participated, including lesbians in shirts with the female symbol with a fist in the center.

The 1982 pride protest took place in Vallecas, running along the Puente de Vallecas-Avenida de la Albufera-Portazgo axis. The 25 June 1982 march was convened by Colectivo de Feministas Lesbianas de Madrid and FLHOC. About 300 people participated, including lesbians in shirts with the female symbol with a fist in the center. Avenida de la Albufera, 46, is where the first authorized pride march took place in Vallecas. The 300 or so protesters were confronted by the police in front of the building after the police wanted marchers to change their route on 25 June 1982.

Members of FLHOC’s women’s group left and, along with other lesbians, created Colectivo de Feministas Lesbianas de Madrid (CFLM) in January 1981. It was at this point that they joined the feminist movement and created a more organized lesbian movement. [63]

CFLM had three objectives in their early years. The first was the defense of lesbianism inside the feminist movement as a normal, legitimate sexual option. The second was to help other lesbians to live their lives with pride. The third was to spread their ideas. Pineda said of this early period, “We were firmly convinced that with this we would win all women and that the feminist movement would be more liberating than it already wanted or pretended to be.” [64]

Lesbians organizers in the early 1980s, including but especially CFLM, wanted to be able to be housed alongside other feminist organizations located on Calle Barquilla; they were denied this because they were lesbians. It was part of the reason they organized the first feminist lesbian in 1983, where one of the topics one be the issue of double militancy.[65]

During the mid-1980s, CFLM militants could forget their identities as lesbians and instead focus on their goals exclusively as women. Some issues, like abortion, CFLM led the feminist movement in the city in addressing the issue. In a lot of the available pictures from the beginning of the abortion rights movement in Madrid, there was not a single photo of activists that included a heterosexual woman.

A meeting of feminists was held in Madrid in 1984. It was inspired by the success of the state meeting of feminists in Granada in 1981 and other similar ones that came after it.

Nosotras que nos queremos tanto was published from 1984 to 1989. It was the magazine of the Colectivo de Feministas Lesbianas de Madrid. It covered a variety of topics including butch/femme relationships, lesbian sexuality, lesbian desire, fantasies and practice. For lesbians, fanzines such as these played an important role in defining and helping them understand their own sexuality as there were still scant resources for lesbians and by lesbians about lesbianism.[66]

Jornadas Feministas Estatales took place in 1985 in Madrid with the motto, “Diez años de lucha del movimiento feminista”. It was organized by Coordinadora Estatal de Organizaciones Feministas.[67]

By the late 1980s, many feminist lesbians in Madrid were highly interested in the feminist activities and theories that were taking place and being discussed in North America. This interest would eventually lead to conflict between abolitionist feminists and liberal queer feminists.[68]

The 1988 Madrid Pride event took place on 28 June. Around 100 people participated in the march, organized by lesbian groups, with a route taking place from Plaza de Callao to Puerta del Sol and then on to Calle de Preciados. It was in this period that Pride continued primarily because of lesbian activists. At Madrid Pride in 1988, gays and lesbians continued their political demands, asking that the law discriminating against same-sex sexual behavior in the Spanish Penal Code be amended. Transactivist have criticized pride in this period for excluding transwomen, engaging in transmisogyny and being largely focused on lesbian feminism. Lesbians disagreed, saying their need for visibility and the need to combat sexism in the homosexual rights movement was why they were being so militant.

Jornadas feministas contra la violencia machista took place in December 1988 in Santiago de Compostela. It included members of CFLM, but not as representatives of the organization. They held a session called “El deseo de las demás es cutre, amigas, el mío no” that defended erotic fantasies between lesbians, along with sadomaschostic lesbian relationshps. Gretel Amman criticized the presentation in Laberint.

Coordinadora de Frentes de Liberación Homosexual del Estado Español (COFLHEE)’s last major effort on behalf of violence against lesbians was a campaign in 1989 with a motto of “Lesbiana, que no te discriminen” to let lesbians know that the Ley Antidiscriminatoria applied to them. It was also the last major campaign by lesbian feminists in the city, as movement subsequently shifted to focus on marriage equality.

In 1989, the lesbian feminist focus shifted to the creation in law banning discrimination against gays and lesbians. In Madrid, these efforts were led by the Grupos de Feministas Lesbianas in COFEE.

In 1989, the lesbian feminist focus shifted to the creation in law banning discrimination against gays and lesbians. In Madrid, these efforts were led by the Grupos de Feministas Lesbianas in COFEE. This was expressed through the Anti-Discrimination Platform, which had 12 points, including third party recognition of same-sex defacto couples, no discrimination allowed in terms of inheritance, pensions, nationality, work permits, and rental contracts. The 12 points were published by CFLM in 1991. It represented one of the first time that lesbians working inside the Coordinadora de Organizaciones Feministas del Estado Español did so on a purely lesbian related topic and where lesbians were not in mixed groups with straight women.

Pride started becoming commercialized across the country during the 1990s, and accelerated on into the 2000s. The commercialization brought criticism from a number of circles, including from lesbians and feminists. They argued that the nature of commercialization meant that certain segments were excluded because pink capitalism mostly focused on gay men.

The result of this commercialization of the major LGBT event of the year nationwide was that lesbians began to become even more autonomous as a political group in the 1990s; lesbian departure from pride was accelerated as feminists left lesbians behind, wanting to explicitly focus on the needs and concerns of heterosexual women without the need to challenge problematic gender norms that lesbians found repressive. In response to the Spanish feminists, some lesbians decided to align themselves more closely with gay men instead, leaving some of their lesbian sisters in the cold politically and socially and setting the scene for queer feminism which would cause ruptures in lesbian circles starting in the 2000s.

The commercialization of Orgullo and the shift towards queer feminism by some lesbians, along with adopting a pro-sex, anti-prohibitionist viewpoint meant the late 1990s and early 2000s were a difficult period for lesbian bolerra militants. These challenges were made even more difficult by the fact that state feminism also started to make the shift from traditional feminism to queer feminism, leaving lesbians without state support and institutional feminism to address their specific needs as women and homosexuals.

CRECUL’s priority in being founded was for lesbian feminists, not feminist lesbians. Their main priority though was lesbian issues, though they approached that from a feminist point of view and were committed to the rights of women in general. Their definition of lesbian feminist through differed from the generation before in the 1980s in that it did center lesbians.

While CRECUL came out of the lesbian third wave of activism, they were different from their peers in that they embraced autonomy inside the militant feminist movement. Doing so positioned them at the front of the lesbian feminist movement nationally.

CRECUL tried to organize a Asamblea Estatal de Lesbianas; they met huge resistance as by that point, lesbian feminist groups were hugely embedded inside feminist structures and felt the need to maintain their hard fought for autonomy inside militant feminist circles. The idea was never able to get off the ground in the 1990s.

During the 1990s, gay men and lesbians like Mili Hernández at COGAM, who by 1992 had become institutional organs of the state, wanted to change the face of pride. They wanted to move away from activism and feminism, and make it the type of event where non-militant lesbians and gays could participate and have fun and so organizers could also increase sponsorship opportunities.

Lesbianas Sin Dudas sometimes found themselves in conflict with other less radicalized lesbian and feminist groups in Madrid during the mid-1990s. These groups would sometimes marginalize their work in shared lesbian and feminist spaces.

Lesbian demands for marriage equality and partnership rights started to gain visibility and support from within their own communities in 1991. Originating from lesbian feminist groups, a set published their demands that year. Lesbian Feminist Collective of Madrid and National Lesbian Feminist Taskforce published a joint statement titled “Lesbiana que no te discriminen”, which said, “We are not in support of institutionalizing (affection) relationships, but we do not accept the discrimination suffered by those lesbians and gays that would like to marry and cannot do it.” That same year, Revolutionary and Cultural Committee for Lesbians (C.R.E.C.U.L.) became the first group to offer to create a political partnership with Spanish political parties to work on enacting laws to establish lesbian relationship rights. By the following year, lesbian feminists began more concentrated and regular efforts to meet with regional and national political parties to achieve their goal of marriage equality.

The “caso RENFE” occured in 1992, the corporation’s Code 54 classified a number of groups as “grupo de riesgo”, including prostitutes, beggars, punks and homosexuals. COGAM, CFLM, La Radical Gai demanded that homosexuals be removed from this list. They were supported by Asamblea Feminista de Madrid and Coordinadora Feminista estatal among others. They demonstrated publicly against it, with both gays and lesbians taking to the street to protest. RENFE finally did. The issue was one of the bigger ones that mobilized many homosexual rights activists that year.

Jornadas Feministas Estatales Juntas y a por Todas took place in Madrid in 1993.[70]

The first time a transsexual woman gave a presentation at Jornadas Feministas Estatales was in 1993 in Madrid, which had a motto of “Juntas ya por todos”. There was a lot of debate about transsexual identity at the conference along with the experiences of sex workers, many of whom were transexuals. Empar Pineda and Cristina Garaizabal facilitated their participation in the event. Both women came out of CFLM.

La Radical Gai and Lesbianas Sin Duda organized a workshop in December 1993 as part of the Jornadas Feministas del Estado español about the practice of safe sex. Their imagery in promoting the workshop was sexually explicit, and included nudes of the female form receiving oral sex.

In 1994, one of the first major attempts at reform in lesbian feminism took place with CFLM and CRECUL partnering to offer an information and telephone lesbian welfare service called “info-lesbo”. This sort of practice was not widely adopted though.

Editoriales Egales is an LGBT publishing house that was created in November 1995 as a joint venture between two lesbian oriented bookstores, the Madrid based Berkana and the Barcelona based Cómplices. The publisher was created because the bookstores realized there were limited options for young Spanish and Latin American feminists to get published and to get recognized. This was also part of an effort to increase visibility and normalize homosexuality for lesbian and gay readers.

As part of trying to support the “pink trade” in support of lesbians, CRECUL launched a discount card for bars and bookstores in May 1995.

A protest was held in Madrid in 1995 in “Por nuestros derechos”, including the recognition of de facto relationships. Despite organizers trying to get as many gays and lesbians to participate as they could in a show of strength. Many more did not as they feared the consequences of coming out of the closet, including things like losing their job, and stayed home. The protest ended with a tactic devised by lesbian feminist, a kiss in protest designed to make their relationships visible to the public.

The 1996 pride march, called Día del Orgullo de Gays, Lesbianas y Transexuales, had a route from Puerta de Alcalá to Puerta del Sol. That year was also the second year that Pride was a weekend affair. More than 2,000 people participated. The march included the first float. Several lesbian organizations participated including LSD, Feminista de Lesbianas, and Coletivos de Gays y Lesbianas. Mili Hernández was involved with the march. The march took place in 30 degree weather, and started with a lesbian orchestra leading the way. They were followed by a float full of transvestites dressed in carnival type costumes, and followed later by more male nudity. There was little female nudity in the event. Since then, the political aspects of Madrid Pride have been overshadowed by continued commercialization of the event as it attracted ever more media attention.

Madrid became home to critical actions around Pride by 2006, a movement that would begin to be taken up by other cities in Spain through Bloque Alternativo. They had the motto ‘Orgullo es protesta’ and included gays, transsexuals, bisexuals and lesbians, along with LGBT collectives such as Liberacción, RQTR, la Eskalera Karakola y el Grupo de Trabajo Queer-GTQ. These radicals became stronger and as the 2010s advanced, they would begin organizing counter programming centered around anti-capitalist, anti-racist, transfeminist and anti-speciesist struggles. Their inclusion of lesbians appeared minimal and much of their struggles often focused around issues specific to transpeople. Many of the slogans explicitly mentioned transpeople.

Children’s writer Olga de Dios was participating in demonstrations in support of lesbian and gay rights in Madrid in the early 2010s. Some of her activism was in lesbian feminist circles.

The Declaración de la Plataforma española Beijing+20 de ONG feministas y de derechos humanos was signed by a large number of Spanish feminist organizations in January 2015 in honor of the 20th anniversary of the United Nations saying that women’s rights were human rights. Among the lesbian and LGBT orgs signing it were CRECUL.

Feminismos y LGTBI – Podemos Comunidad de Madrid mentioned Lesbian Visibility Day on their Twitter account on 26 April 2016, using the hashtag #DiaVisibilidadLesbica.

Villaverde Entiende y Usera con Orgullo both held Pride marches on 2 July 2016 with the goal of showing that gay rights and LGBT visibility should not and do not die on the periphery of Madrid. Their march started in the south and ended at Atocha, joining the bigger Orgullo events in the city. They were supported by neighborhood organizations including La Unidad de Villaverde Este, La Unidad de San Cristóbal, AVIB, AV La Incolora, AV Los Rosales, AV Zofío y AV Orcasitas, and the Delegación de la FAPA de Villaverde. Feminist and lesbian militant Coral Cano, who was born in Usera, raised the rainbow flag during its presentation at Pride week. Descriptions of the events and programming suggest little specific content aimed at or about lesbians. Pictures of the event suggest it was dominated by male attendance.

Madrid Pride in 2017 was once against dominated by highly visible men, the popularity of floats featuring muscular men, and women generally relegated to marchers in the front section. There was some lesbian programming, more than usual as the city was hosting World Pride 2017. Sedef Çakmak was among the lesbians to attend World Pride 2017 Madrid. She was the first publicly out lesbian politician in Turkey. She also participated in the International Conference on Human Rights, held from June 26 to 28 at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid that occurred in conjunction with Madrid World Pride. By 2017, a Orgullo Critico counter event was being staged in Madrid. This version though was still exclusionary to lesbians in the sense that it focused on countering the cisheteronormative model, for which radical feminist lesbians were excluded.

The women who went on to found Encuentros Bolleros participated in the 2018 8 de Marzo feminist march with a banner reminding women that lesbians exist and are part of the feminist struggle.

Encuentros Bolleros was founded in Madrid in October 2018, informally, after its founders saw a gap in the LGTBIQ where translesbian feminists were not being represented politically or socially.

The first Jornadas Bollofeministas took place on 14 and 15 June 2019 in Madrid. The bollero feminist movement was transfeminist in nature. It was organized by Encuentros Bolleros, who had a goal of making bolleras visible in Madrid as a whole and inside queer spaces and political spaces. The Jornada was held at the Museo La Neomudéjar.

CRECUL and Elena de León issued a statement in June 2019 ahead of the Madrid Orgullo festivities saying that LGBT organizations have hidden lesbians and lesbian identity. CRECUL argued that the inability of LGBT organizations to make lesbians visible and lack of willingness to address the concerns of lesbians means lesbians should consider leaving the alphabet soup and returning to lesbian feminism. León and CRECUL also noted that 50 years after Stonewall, lesbian needs were still not being addressed inside Spain. Among these concerns were,

Guarantee of access to any assisted human reproduction technique (HRT) in public health, for single women and partners of unmarried women, in particular the ROPA technique for receiving oocytes from the couple,
Gynecological and STD prevention protocols adapted to the reality of lesbian relationships.
Lesbian and bisexual senior residence centers, and education in sexual diversity for all which included lesbians,
Recognition of the non-pregnant mother and shared affiliation of the children of the female couple, without being married,
Recognition of the custody of children in de facto relationships after the breakup of lesbian couples,
Parental and family leave for the care of minors and relatives,
Leave for the purposes of pursuing adoption, seeking custody for the purposes of adoption or foster care,
Aid for both working mothers of homomarental families, both married and in de facto relationships,
The same rights including civil, social, labor and tax rights, for common-law couples that are granted to marriage,
The same measures for the prevention and attention to intra-gender violence inside lesbian couples afforded to opposite sex couples,
That lesbophobic crimes, including “reparative rape”, be treated as gender-based violence under the law, and
A receptive feminist movement that voices and echoes the demands of all feminists, including lesbian feminists.

Consejo de las Mujeres del Municipio de Madrid presented a petition to RTVE in July 2019 to condemn the harassment faced by feminist journalist Montserrat Boix for her reporting on womb rental in Spain. The petition was signed by 325 organizations and individuals including CRECUL and Observatorio Valenciano contra la LGTBIfobia. No other LGBT organizations signed the petition. Boix was moved from her job following a broadcast on womb rentals, with the editor making the decision, Lluis Guilera, being a gay man who had a child with his partner by hiring a woman to use her womb to carry the child to term; the practice was illegal in Spain at the time. Those signing the petition also asked for Boix to be reinstated.

The Comunidad de Madrid’s Consejería de Familia produced a report in 2020 called “Estudio sobre las causas de la invisibilidad y la doble discriminación que sufre el colectivo de lesbianas en la Comunidad de Madrid. Resumen ejecutivo” for institutional distribution. The study included transwomen as lesbians, and the trans community made a particular effort to reach out to transwomen who identified as lesbians to be included in the survey. It was also supported by Transexualia, LesWorking, Asociación Fulanita de Tal and Asociación Innicia. Feminist groups, a traditional home to lesbians in Madrid, were not specifically reached out to. The researchers surveyed 204 lesbians living in the region. Homosexuality was mentioned three times in the document. Issues of reproductive healthcare, and particularly fertility treatments and the issues of lesbian mothers, were not mentioned at all. Biological sex is not referred to either, despite a history of repression for lesbians in Madrid being sex based. There was no data table, nor any indication of how many of the 204 lesbians were transwomen, transmen or non-binary.

Feminist groups in Spain in April 2020 protested the role of ‘Coordinador Parental’ in custody disputes, saying their power went beyond that of mediation to the point where coordinators could coerce children into visiting non-custodial parents for whom there had been alleged abuse by the parent towards the child. The feminist groups believed the training was minimal, insufficient and doubtful in terms of being effective at having coordinators trained for dealing with the realities of things like partner violence and violence against children. They also denounced the use of non-clinical descriptions that should be considered in their role, include parental Alienation Syndrome or “threat syndrome.” Among the signatories was CRECUL. No major LGBT organization signed the petition.

FELGTB held a virtual press conference on 22 April 2021 ahead of Lesbian Visibility Day to draw attention to the theme of the year, Feminisms, Equality and Rights Humans. The press conference was led by coordinator of Lesbian Policies of FELGTB Cristina Pérez.

The Mayor of Madrid Martínez Almeida, a member of Partido Popular, decided that the rainbow flag would not fly from the Ayuntamiento de Madrid during 2021 Orgullo festivities. The TQI+ community, with support of traditional LGBT organizations, had been very active during 2021 in demanding the passage of a self-ID law on a national level, increasing their national visibility compared to past years. At the same time, they had met resistance from feminist groups and aligned lesbian groups who opposed the erosion of Spain’s constitutionally protested sex-based rights. Those activities were intensified, and polarizing, as the TQI+ lobby intensified efforts to have a win they could take into Orgullo festivities in Madrid. The previous year, the flag was banned from flying on the building as a result of a Supreme Court ruling, with a compromise being reached of the flag being hung on the side of the street. The Ayuntamiento did agree to illuminate the building in the colors of the rainbow during pride. No big parade was held in 2021, with other face-to-face meetings and events taking place at smaller venues.

Feminists in Madrid marched in protest of sexual exploitation, surrogacy and the proposed Trans Law on 23 October 2021. Their route started at Plaza de Neptuno and ended at Puerta del Sol. Several thousand women participated in one of the largest marches by women since the start of the pandemic, after the previous 8 March International Women’s Labor Day marches had been denied permits by the government. One of the groups of women actively participating in the march were lesbians, who claimed that the gender self-identification components of the Trans Law were homophobic and lesbophobic. Many lesbians in Spain have been accused of being TERFs for excluding male bodied individuals from their dating pool. Some of this was reflected in signs, both by lesbians and other women in in attendance, including signs that said, “Terf es el nuevo feminazi” and “Ser lesbiana no es transfobia”.

Melilla

Gema Carolina Aguilar was born in 1977 in El Rubio but grew up in Fuengirola. In 2003, she moved to Melilla, becoming a civil servant in 2006, serving as a public infant and primary school teacher. While in Melilla, she was involved with Guelaya-Ecologistas en Acción, the LGBT organizations Amlega and Ojala, and the feminist organization Plataforma 25N Melilla. She became the Secretary General of Podemos Melilla in 2015, the same year that she ran for the Spanish Senate as a Podemos representative.

Murcia

Colectivo Feminista Paro de Mujeres Cartagena mentioned Lesbian Visibility Day on their Twitter account on 26 April 2021, using the hashtag #DiaVisibilidadLesbica.

Navarra

Comité de Homosexuales Navarro (CHN) was founded in 1976 by Javier Cenoz. The group’s membership soon declined but the homosexual rights movement in the region was kept alive as a result of lesbians who came into it from Coordinadora Feminista de Navarra and the Asamblea de Mujeres de Tudela.

Coordinadora Feminista de Navarra (CFN) was founded in 1978. It was one of the first LGB rights organizations founded in the region.

Feministen Koordinadoran was created inside EHGAM by lesbian militants in Pamplona in 1982, with the idea that men and women could work together. Despite their beliefs and willingness to be partners with gay men in joint activism inside the same organization, EHGAM meetings, including Feministen Koordinadoran ones, were dominated by gay men’s issues, and it was difficult for them to advance lesbian feminist activism in their joint struggle. The women soon realized that it wasn’t a good fit. They soon approached the local feminist coordinator so they could leave EHGAM and join the feminist groups instead. They then founded the Nafarroako Lesbianen Kolektiboa in the late 1980s with the goal of not straying from the feminist movement but also of increasing lesbian visibility. Because of those actions, that group of lesbians were then excluded from participating in actions with mixed gay rights groups.

The lesbian feminist group Nafarroako Koordinakundeko Lesbiana Feministen Kolektiboa was founded in 1982.

Lesbians were integrated into Coordinadora Feminista de Navarra by 1987.

Valencia

Colectivo de Lesbianas de Valencia were active in the post Franco period. They tried to become involved with both gay men’s rights groups and feminist groups during that period, but neither were particularly receptive to them. Feminist identification at the time was around being a wife and a mother, which denied women’s sexuality. Feminists were not interested in addressing women’s sexuality at all, nor about challenging the idea that women were wives and mothers.

Among the lesbians participating in the feminist efforts for the right to divorce and right to abortion in the early 1980s in Valencia was Teresa Meana. She had not yet come out of the closet and did not until the mid-1980s.

The lesbians of Moviment d´Alliberament Gai del País Valenciá’s Colectivo de Lesbianas activities took place on two fronts, that of homosexuality and that of feminism. Individual members worked on each aspect per their own interest, with the understanding that the coordination between the two was interesting and fulfilling.

Colectivo de Lesbianas de Valencia del Moviment d’Alliberament Gay del País Valenciá organized the second Jornadas Estatals de Lesbianas in Valencia in 1982. This would inspire the creation Coordinadora de Organizaciones Feministas del Estado Español.

A meeting of feminists was held in Valencia in 1983. It was inspired by the success of the state meeting of feminists in Granada in 1981 and other similar ones that came after it.

IV Jornadas Estatales de feministas Independientes took place in 1983 in Valencia.

The homosexual front movement in Spain, recognizing that they should try to bring lesbians back into the fold and out from the feminist movement decided on a strategy starting in 1991 of supporting the legal recognition of same-sex de facto couples in a civil registry. The homosexual liberation rights groups leading that were COGAM in Madrid, Col.lectiu Lambda in Valencia, and GEHITU in the Basque Country.

Dones i Lesbianes Documentant-se (DILDO) was created in 2009 in Barcelona. They described themselves as distrifeministaqueer, feminist, queer and anti-capitalist. They appear to have disappeared from the city by 2013, and re-emerged in Valencia, were based out of Casa de la Dona at Calle Buenos Aires, 13 and continued to be active in 2021.

The deputy mayor of Alicante Mari Carmen Sánchez inagurated Orgullo 2020 Alicante celebrations on 13 June 2020 in the Salón Azul del Ayuntamiento. All political parties in the local government except Unides Podem and Vox attended the event. With a motto of “2020 Mujeres LTB: sororidad y feminismo”, three women, each representing one of the classes represented by LTB, told their stories at the opening ceremony.[71]

References

Asamblea Queer BCN. (2001, February 15). Nacimiento de la Asamblea Stonewall // 2001. Retrieved from Asamblea Queer BCN: https://web.archive.org/web/20100614014750/http://blog.sindominio.net/blog/asamblea_queer_bcn/asamblea_stonewall/2001/02/15/nacimiento_de_la_asamblea_stonewall

Berzal de Miguel, V. (2020, July 19). Historia del Activismo LGTBI Español a Través del Orgullo de Madrid (I). Cultura Diversa. Retrieved from https://culturadiversa.es/2020/07/historia-orgullo-de-madrid.html

Canet, V. (2017, August 8). Dolors Majoral: «Separatist lesbianism aims to find our own models as lesbians». dos manzanas. Retrieved from https://www.dosmanzanas.com/2017/08/dolors-majoral-el-lesbianismo-separatista-pretende-buscar-nuestros-propios-modelos-como-lesbianas.html

Carretero, R. (2014, July 5). Así han cambiado las marchas del Orgullo Gay en España desde 1977. Retrieved from Huffington Post: https://www.huffingtonpost.es/2014/07/05/historia-orgullo-gay-espana_n_5557231.html

Codina Canet, M. A. (2020). Archivo y Memoria del Feminiso español del Último tercio del siglo XX. Fuentes para. Instituto de las Mujeres. Madrid: Estilo Estrugraf Impresores, S.L.

EFE; Radio Rioja. (2022, June 3). Fin de la EBAU con polémica. Cadena SER. Retrieved from https://cadenaser.com/rioja/2022/06/03/fin-de-la-ebau-con-polemica-radio-rioja/

Europa Press. (2020, March 4). Una investigación concluye que la mayoría de las mujeres lesbianas han defendido las reivindicaciones feministas. Europa Press. Retrieved from https://www.europapress.es/la-rioja/noticia-investigacion-concluye-mayoria-mujeres-lesbianas-defendido-reivindicaciones-feministas-20200304101950.html

FOESSA. (1983). Informe sociológico sobre el cambio social de España : 1975-1983. IV, Informe FOESSA, Volumen II. Madrid: Fundación FOESSA. doi:8424003071

García Dauder, D. (2019). Memorias Revultas. In F. Vila Núñez, & J. Sáez del Álamo (Eds.), El Libro de Buen Amor, Sexualidades raras y políticas extrañas (pp. 19-29). Madrid: Ayuntamiento de Madrid. Retrieved from https://traficantes.net/sites/default/files/pdfs/LIBRO_DEL_BUEN_AMOR.pdf

Gil, S. L. (2011). Genealogía de las diferencias. Madrid: Trafi cantes de Sueños. Retrieved from https://traficantes.net/sites/default/files/pdfs/Nuevos%20feminismos-TdS.pdf

Goicoechea Gaona, M. Á., Clavo Sebastián, M. J., & Álvarez Terán, R. (2019, June). Feminismo y derechos para las mujeres homosexuales. Feminismo, 297-322. doi:: 10.14198/fem.2019.33.12

J.L.T. (2009, August 15). La españolas del LSD. ideal.es. Retrieved from https://www.ideal.es/granada/20090815/cultura/espanolas-20090815.html

La Noticia. (2008). La Entrevista: Francisco Pérez Diego. La Noticia. Retrieved from http://www.lanoticia.es/ediciones/2008—/ln452/entrevista.htm

Martín Hernández, R. (2011). El cuerpo enfermo: arte y VIH/SIDA en España. Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

Mengana, V. (2022, July 13). Taller SEXO CON-SENTIDO, entre mujeres. Retrieved from Blog de amantis: https://www.amantis.net/blog/taller-sexo-con-sentido-entre-mujeres/

Moreno Galilea, D. (2018). El asociacionismo femenino rural en la lucha por la autonomía riojana (1970-1983). Actas del XIV Congreso de la Asociación de Historia Contemporánea «del siglo XIX al XXI. Tendencias y debates» (pp. 936-944). Alicante: Asociación de Historia Contemporánea. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/41097656/El_asociacionismo_femenino_rural_en_la_lucha_por_la_autonom%C3%ADa_riojana_1970_1983_

Navarrete, C., Ruido, M., & Vila, F. (2005). Trastornos para devenir: entre artes y políticas feministas y queer en el Estado español. Feminismosy Prácticas Colaborativas, Globalización Desdeabajo, 158-187. Retrieved from https://marceloexposito.net/pdf/1969_desacuerdos2.pdf

Nenazas. (2022). Retrieved from Nenazas: https://nenazasblog.wordpress.com/

nuevecuatrouno. (2019, November 15). Cutillas y Rubio, dos diputados riojanos de VOX en la Asamblea de Madrid. nuevecuatrouno. Retrieved from https://nuevecuatrouno.com/2019/11/15/rioja-politica-vox-santiago-abascal-jorge-cutillas-alicia-rubio-polemica/

nuevecuatrouno. (2019, November 15). La riojana Alicia Rubio la lía en la Asamblea de Madrid: «El feminismo es cáncer». nuevecuatrouno. Retrieved from https://nuevecuatrouno.com/2019/11/15/rioja-logrono-asamblea-madrid-alicia-rubio-vox-feminismo/

nuevecuatrouno. (2020, March 6). Este 8-M las riojanas gritarán: ‘Luchando molestamos; solo muertas importamos’. nuevecuatrouno. Retrieved from https://nuevecuatrouno.com/2020/03/06/rioja-logrono-ocho-marzo-coordinadora-feminismo/

Patronato Municipal de Turismo y Playas de Alicante. (2020, June 13). La vicealcaldesa de Alicante abre la semana LGTBI reivindicando los derechos de las mujeres lesbianas, bisexuales y transexuales. Patronato Municipal de Turismo y Playas de Alicante. Retrieved from https://www.alicanteturismo.com/noticia-13-06-2020-la-vicealcaldesa-de-alicante-abre-la-semana-lgtbi-reivindicando-los-derechos-de-las-mujeres-lesbianas-bisexuales-y-transexuales/

Plataforma Feminista Galega. (2017, June 12). Manifesto do 12 de xuño de 2017. Retrieved from Plataforma Feminista Galega: https://plataformafeministagalega.org/manifesto-de-apoio-da-pfg-a-coruna-ao-colectivo-lgtbqi/

Romero Bachiller, C. (2019). Desatar el deseo. In F. Vila Núñez, & J. Sáez del Álamo (Eds.), El libro de buen [a]mor sexualidades raras y políticas extrañas (pp. 120-135). Madrid: Ayuntamiento de Madrid. Retrieved from https://traficantes.net/sites/default/files/pdfs/LIBRO_DEL_BUEN_AMOR.pdf

S., S. (2022, June 2). Un artículo sobre feminismo y personas trans de Almudena Grandes inaugura la EBAU en España. ABC (Spain). Retrieved from https://www.abc.es/sociedad/abci-articulo-sobre-feminismo-y-personas-trans-almudena-grandes-inaugura-ebau-espana-202206021745_noticia.html#vca=rrss&vmc=abc-es&vso=tw&vli=cm-general&_tcode=NmU0Y20x

Sainz, S. (2022). Cuando Iberpop puso a La Rioja en el mapa. (larioja.com, Ed.) La Rioja. Retrieved from https://especial.larioja.com/2022/quefuede/iberpop.php

Sanfeliu, L. (2008, June). Escrito en el cuerpo. Sexualidades femeninas al margen de la norma heterosexual. Arenal, 14(1), 31-57.

Trujillo Barbadillo, G. (2007). Identidades y acción colectiva un estudio del movimiento lesbiano en España, 1977-1998. (A. Richards, Ed.) Madrid: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.

Val Cubero, A. (2003). La mujer logroñesa a través de la imagen en el siglo XX. Logroño: Gobierno de La Rioja, Instituto de Estudios Riojanos.

Valencia, S. (2019). [A]mor decolonial. In F. Vila Núñez, & J. Sáez del Álamo (Eds.), El libro de buen [a]mor sexualidades raras y políticas extrañas (pp. 76 – 85). Madrid: Madrid : Ayuntamiento de Madrid. Retrieved from https://traficantes.net/sites/default/files/pdfs/LIBRO_DEL_BUEN_AMOR.pdf

Varela, J., Parra Contreras, P., & Val Cubero, A. (2016). Memorias para hacer camino. Madrid: Ediciones Morata, S.L.,.

Vila Núñez, F., & Sáez del Álamo, J. (Eds.). (2019). El libro de buen [a]mor sexualidades raras y políticas extrañas. Madrid: Ayuntamiento de Madrid. Retrieved from https://traficantes.net/sites/default/files/pdfs/LIBRO_DEL_BUEN_AMOR.pdf

Villar Sáenz, A. (June 2008). El Lesbianianismo en el Movimiento Feminista y los Colectivos de Lesbianas. :Centro de Estudios y Documentación para las libertades sexuales / ALDARTE. Basque Country: :Centro de Estudios y Documentación para las libertades sexuales / ALDARTE.

[1] (Sanfeliu, 2007)

[2] (Codina Canet, 2020)

[3] Spanish: “Ojo, que el ser feminista no es ser lesbiana”

[4] (Trujillo Barbadillo, 2007)

[5] (Navarrete, Ruido, & Vila, 2005)

[6] (Trujillo Barbadillo, 2007)

[7] (Martín Hernández, 2011; J.L.T., 2009)

[8] (Valencia, 2019)

[9] (Goicoechea Gaona, Clavo Sebastián, & Álvarez Terán, 2019)

[10] (Vila Núñez & Sáez del Álamo, 2019)

[11] (Vila Núñez & Sáez del Álamo, 2019)

[12] (Berzal de Miguel, 2020)

[13] (Sanfeliu, 2007)

[14] Spanish; Nosotras, en tanto que mujeres de la Asamblea de Donosti y parte del Movimiento Feminista, lo que pensamos es que es muy importante vincularse al Movimiento Feminista, la marginación y opresión que suframos por la opción sexual adoptada sepamos unirla a la situación que padecemos el conjunto de mujeres.

[15] (FOESSA, 1983)

[16] (FOESSA, 1983)

[17] (FOESSA, 1983)

[18] (Vila Núñez & Sáez del Álamo, 2019)

[19] (Sanfeliu, 2007)

[20] (Codina Canet, 2020)

[21] (Vázquez Fernández, 2020; Samitie, 2019; Vila Núñez & Sáez del Álamo, 2019)

[22] (Sanfeliu, 2007)

[23] (Sanfeliu, 2007)

[24] (Vila Núñez & Sáez del Álamo, 2019)

[25] (Vila Núñez & Sáez del Álamo, 2019)

[26] (Vila Núñez & Sáez del Álamo, 2019; Trujillo Barbadillo, 2007)

[27] (Gil, 2011, p. 197; Asamblea Queer BCN, 2001)

[28] (Mengana, 2022)

[29] (Romero Bachiller, 2019)

[30] (Romero Bachiller, 2019; Vila Núñez & Sáez del Álamo, 2019)

[31] (Vila Núñez & Sáez del Álamo, 2019)

[32] (Plataforma Feminista Galega, 2017)

[33] (Sanfeliu, 2007)

[34] (Val Cubero, 2003)

[35] (Moreno Galilea, 2018; Val Cubero, 2003)

[36] (Codina Canet, 2020)

[37] (Moreno Galilea, 2018; Val Cubero, 2003; FOESSA, 1983)

[38] (Moreno Galilea, 2018; Val Cubero, 2003)

[39] (Moreno Galilea, 2018; Val Cubero, 2003)

[40] (Goicoechea Gaona, Clavo Sebastián, & Álvarez Terán, 2019)

[41] (Villar Sáenz, June 2008; Varela, Parra Contreras, & Val Cubero, 2016)

[42] (Val Cubero, 2003)

[43] (Sainz, 2022)

[44] (Álvarez Terán, Goicoechea Gaona, & Clavo Sebastián, 2019; La Noticia, 2008)

[45] (Europa Press, 2020)

[46] (Álvarez Terán, Goicoechea Gaona, & Clavo Sebastián, Conciencia Social y política de las mujeres que aman a mujeres en la transición al siglo XXI en La Rioja, 2019)

[47] (Álvarez Terán, Goicoechea Gaona, & Clavo Sebastián, 2019; Nenazas, 2022)

[48] (Goicoechea Gaona, Clavo Sebastián, & Álvarez Terán, 2019)

[49] (nuevecuatrouno, 2019; nuevecuatrouno, 2019)

[50] (nuevecuatrouno, 2020; Europa Press, 2020)

[51] (S., 2022; EFE; Radio Rioja, 2022)

[52] (Sanfeliu, 2007)

[53] (Sanfeliu, 2007)

[54] (Carretero, 2014)

[55] (Carretero, 2014)

[56] (Vila Núñez & Sáez del Álamo, 2019; Trujillo Barbadillo, 2007)

[57] (Canet, 2017)

[58] (Codina Canet, 2020)

[59] (García Dauder, 2019; Trujillo Barbadillo, 2007)

[60] (Trujillo Barbadillo, 2007)

[61] (Goicoechea Gaona, Clavo Sebastián, & Álvarez Terán, 2019; Vila Núñez & Sáez del Álamo, 2019)

[62] (Vila Núñez & Sáez del Álamo, 2019)

[63] (Goicoechea Gaona, Clavo Sebastián, & Álvarez Terán, 2019)

[64] (Goicoechea Gaona, Clavo Sebastián, & Álvarez Terán, 2019)

[65] (García Dauder, 2019)

[66] (García Dauder, 2019)

[67] (Vila Núñez & Sáez del Álamo, 2019)

[68] (Goicoechea Gaona, Clavo Sebastián, & Álvarez Terán, 2019)

[69] (Romero Bachiller, 2019)

[70] (Vila Núñez & Sáez del Álamo, 2019)

[71] (Patronato Municipal de Turismo y Playas de Alicante, 2020)

A Coruña, Albacete, Alcudia, Alicante, Andalucía, Aragon, Ávila, Badajoz, Barcelona, Basque Country, Bilbao, Burgos, Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha, Catalonia, Cáceres, Córdoba, Ciudad Real, Extremadura, Galicia, Gijón, Granada, Guadalajara, Irun, La Coruña, La Rioja, Lagunas de Ruidera, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, León, Logroño, Madrid, Mallorca, Málaga, Mérida, Melilla, Murcia, Navarra, Oviedo, Palma de Mallorca, Pamplona, Rodalquilar, Salamanca, San Sebastián, Santander, Santiago de Compostela, Segovia, Sevilla, Torrelavega, Valencia, Valladolid, Vigo, Vitoria-Gasteiz

España Sáfica

An incomplete history Lesbians and feminism in Spain by region

Nationally

Andalucía

Aragon

Asturias

Balearic Islands

Basque Country

Canary Islands

Cantabria

Castilla – La Mancha

Castilla y León

Catalonia

Extremadura

Galicia

La Rioja

Madrid

Melilla

Murcia

Navarra

Valencia

References

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Like this:

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

An incomplete history Lesbians and feminism in Spain by region

Nationally

Andalucía

Aragon

Asturias

Balearic Islands

Basque Country

Canary Islands

Cantabria

Castilla – La Mancha

Castilla y León

Catalonia

Extremadura

Galicia

La Rioja

Madrid

Melilla

Murcia

Navarra

Valencia

References

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Share this:

Like this:

Leave a Reply Cancel reply