After two years of no parades due to Covid-19 in Madrid, several hundred thousand people marched through Madrid on Saturday to support the Pride March. They called for "resilience" against hate speech.
Many of the demonstrators were armed with rainbow flags which are symbols of the LGBT community (lesbians, gay, bisexual, transgender and others) and gathered at the end behind a banner that bore the slogan for this 2022 edition, "Visibility. Pride. And Resilience." Others carried squirt gun and cooled off in the heat. Some others were shirtless and danced to the beat of techno or Brazilian percussion.
The huge celebration of the
Victor Romero Fernandez (38-year-old Madrid teacher who attended with his friends) said, "I missed the party a lot. The atmosphere is great." "You could see that people were keen to party after such a long time."
Three years after Franco's death, homosexuality was made illegal in Spain. Since then, the country has been one of the most open. It allowed same-sex marriages and adopted for same-sex couples in 2005. It is still "important" that homosexual people are given "visibility", as the Spanish Federation FELGTBI stated before the parade, deploring "increased hate speech" in a press release.
According to the federation these speeches "undermine social coexistence' and "endanger progress made to date", which was prompted by the march that showed support for the "Trans" bill. .
This text must be viewed in Parliament starting this summer. It will allow anyone to have their name or gender changed on their identity papers upon simple request beginning at 16. If adopted, it would make Spain one of few countries that allows gender self-determination.
