Over in the United States, the raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York City took place in the early hours of 28 June 1969. What followed was six days of riots and clashes with the police, largely led by gay men and lesbians, with some participation by transsexuals.[1]

            Pride marches began in the United States the following year, 28 June 1970 in New York City on the first anniversary of the Stonewall uprising as a way to “…commemorate the Christopher Street Uprisings of last summer in which thousands of homosexuals went to the streets to demonstrate against centuries of abuse….from government hostility to employment and housing discrimination, Mafia control of Gay bars, and anti-Homosexual laws”.[2]

            The march came about as a result NYU Student Homophile League lesbian activist Ellen Brody and Homophile Youth Movement’s Craig Rodwell putting together a proposal together with E.R.C.H.O. in November 1969 at their conference. The 13 homosexual rights organizations attending passed a resolution in support of this calling for a nationally annual demonstration, which they called Christopher Street Liberation Day. E.R.C.H.O. had already been holding annual marches on 4 July from 1965 to 1969 which they called Reminder Day Pickets. Without the involvement of Brody and Rodwell pushing for national, annual demonstrations, it is possible the Stonewall riots likely would have been forgotten or viewed as a historical artifact instead of a living thing in the way that similar riots involving other marginalized groups in the United States have been forgotten except for occasional mentions in history books and solemn ceremonies like the Chicago 1919 race riot.[3]

            Over in Spain when those events were occurring, Francisco Franco was still Spain’s leader was laying the groundwork for what would happen following is death and the transition to the country’s next phase. This included appointing Juan Carlos de Borbón the Príncipe de España on 22 July 1969, making him the heir apparent after first having sworn allegiance to Franco’s Movimiento Nacional. From that point, Juan Carlos became the apparent heir apparent, who served as the acting head of state when Franco was temporary incapacitated in 1974 and 1975. Franco resigned as Prime Minister in 1973 and named Navy Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco as his successor. This appointment was short lived as Carrero Blanco was assassinated by an ETA bomb on 29 December 1973. Then Madrid mayor and Minister of the Interior Carlos Arias Navarro was appointed to replace him, who then faced a series of crisis that seriously challenged the regime for the first time. Full controls of government were given to Juan Carlos on 30 October 1975. Franco died on 20 November 1975, setting into action the Spanish democratic transition, which lasted until around 1982 by which point Spain had a new constitution, a functional multiparty government, a military coup had been successfully put down and a faction of ETA had agreed to put down arms.

            It is in the final years of Franco’s life that any sort of homosexual activism begins to take place. At the time, 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. At the same time, the Franco regime had severely limited the ability of people to legally protest, or to even legally gather without state approval.

            Before Madrid had its first officially sanctioned and permitted 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, sixty, seventy and eighty. Among the lesbians to attend these early marches during the dictatorship was Vito Virtudes. These marches attracted some media attention, but it was generally very sparse and not very positive. 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.[4]

            Stonewall and the Christopher Street Liberation Day’s influence in Spain is in this period was not a result of specific American activists coming over from the United States to Spain to do activism or invitations from Americans to Spaniards to come to the United States and learn about activism that they could take back to their local communities. Rather, the influence of the Stonewall uprising was about creating a shared global history of the broader LGTB community. This shared history serves as a touchstone, a reference point and a moment from which others could draw inspiration. It also served to show that change can come from activism, that the community can grow, can out of the closet and change the social, cultural and political climate for members of the LGTB community.

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[1] (Metcalf, 2020; Álvarez, 2020)

[2] (E.R.C.H.O., 1970)

[3] (Metcalf, 2020)

[4] (Carretero, 2014; Batlle Cardona, 2020; Medialdea, 2018)