Lesbians during the socialist government of Felipe González

Lesbians during the socialist government of Felipe González (1982 - 1996) experienced several legal and cultural developments that resulted in more rights and community awareness.

Background

During the transition period that preceded the González government, culturally and politically there was a hold over from the Franco regime in terms of the legal status and cultural attitudes towards gays and lesbians from the Franco period. Lesbians and gays were still legally prosecuted by the government in this period. The police also continued persecution of lesbian, gay and transsexual individuals. Lesbians escaped the worst of this though, as much of the focus of persecution continued to be on gay men. This led many lesbians and gays to not want to be politically engaged with the transition process. Movimiento Español de Liberación Homosexual (MELH) was the most important lesbian and gay political organization in the transition period.

In some cases, histories of homosexuality in the earlier period and during this period do not include lesbians because they treat them as if lesbians did not exist as homosexuals.

There is a lack of historic ethnographic data from this period to provide a comprehensive picture as to the characteristics of the lesbian community at during this period. No such investigation would be done until 1999.

Lesbians, as a group and a culture, continued to be largely ignored by Spanish society compared to gay men. They remained rather invisible. Knowledge about lesbians from this period does not come from the same sources about Spanish gay men of the period.

Lesbians in this period were often in feminist spaces. Later feminist and gay male focused research on this period ignored lesbian contributions to the feminist movement. The impact of this is research in this period on GLBT communities often is absent a gender perspective on the GLBT rights movement. Lesbian experiences disappear from both histories.

Spanish lesbianism differs from lesbianism in the United States in that lesbians retain a unique political and social identity.  In the United States, lesbianism as an identity has largely been subsumed by a broader GLBT movement that removed gender and sex classifications, which then used a larger group identity with its own economic power employed to support their causes.

Masculine women in this period were often accused of being lesbians because of their subversion of traditional Spanish gender norms.  This existed despite the fact that not all Spanish lesbians are masculine, nor were all masculine women lesbians.

Women in relationships with other women in this period did not always refer to themselves as lesbians.

One of the reasons that lesbians continued to be invisible in this period is that they are less easily recognizable than gay men as they are generally first identified as women.

The Women's Area of the Fundación Triángulo de Madrid has explained the invisibility of lesbians in this and other periods as, "A gay man has always been able to move to another place, seeking to live his identity in freedom. While a lesbian woman stayed near her house. There are always parents, brothers or children to take care of and those who do not disappoint ". Rocio Jimenez explained this further, saying, "And that's how lesbians have developed since invisibility, at the expense of that scarlet letter that a man has never had to deal with." According to Mexican feminist Gloria Careaga, feminism often  "moves away from aspects such as sexuality and intimate life to focus on the social and the political." Rocío González of Fundación Triángulo said that feminists feared the "contagion of stigma" and disassociated themselves from lesbians.

Globally in this period, lesbians found themselves feeling doubly displaced; they often found the gay and trans liberation movement deeply misogynistic and patriarchal while at the same time feeling like the feminism was ignoring them and their needs as women.  This situation led to the growth of lesbian feminism and lesbian separatist movements.

Identity

By the time of the start of the González government, the lesbian and gay community had rejected the use of the word homosexual as part of their identity. They believed the word was imposed on the, by outsiders and used to define them medically and that it had a derogatory meaning in Spanish society. Lesbian and gay were used instead. Queer (Spanish: “marika”) was not used in this period. In Spain, the broader homosexual rights movement was known as GLTB during the 1980s and 1990s. This served to exasperate gender imbalances in the movement, by signaling to women that they were not wanted. This would be slow to change when in relation to forming LGB identities, with lesbians being slower to abandon the femme/butch identity than Spanish gay men with their queen/bear identities. Lesbianism in this period was often defined around social identity based on external stigmatization. These identities put lesbians into conflict with a number of forces in Spanish society, including the church, politicians and medical professionals.

Lesbians during this period had few role models, with no well-known actresses, politicians or artists being out of the closet.

A core part of lesbian identity in the 1980s often aligned with being a feminist. Despite this, there were tensions between the feminist community and lesbians.

Legal and political situation for lesbians

Lesbians gained visibility as a group during the 1980s as a result of their taking to the streets. It was not until 1986 with the arrest of two women for kissing on 28 July that lesbian feminist political activism took on a bigger stage,with lesbian groups holding a massive protest with a public kiss at the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, which has been repeated annually since then. The couple spent two days in jail. Their incarceration led to lesbians pushing for the overturn of the law on Public Scandal.

Spanish lesbians in this period tend to be involved in party politics with Izquierda Unida (IU) or PSOE. Lesbians were likely to be involved in these parties less because the parties supported lesbian rights, but more because they otherwise tended to align with their general political views.  As time progressed, these parties tended to align more closely with lesbian political goals.

It would not be until the mid-1990s that lesbianism as a unique political movement would begin to step independently into the political sphere, demanding legal equality and citizenship rights enjoyed by the rest of the Spanish populace. During the early 1990s, much of lesbian political thought was on practical issues, where there was not a heavy emphasis on developing broader LGB theory that underpinned their political activities.

During the 1980s, institutionalist lesbian activism declined.

In 1988, the Law of Public Scandal was abolished.

Starting in 1995, anti-discrimination laws based on sexual orientation began to be passed around Spain.

In 1983, PSOE created the Institute for Women which formally institutionalized feminism in the Spanish government.

During the mid-1990s, identity politics began to play a role in lesbian groups. One of the women involved in this was Gracia Trujillo.

During the 1990s, state elements began to use gender perspective more when addressing the needs of women and lesbians. Some groups of feminists and lesbians opposed this approach as they saw it as a return to Francoist policies of making both groups victims who needed protection and needed the state to determine the direction and goals of both lesbians and feminists.

Relationship rights

In 1987, the first male gay couple tried to apply for a marriage license in Spain when Josep Teixidor and Jesús Lozano submitted an application at the Civil Registry of Vic, Barcelona to try to address the legal vacuum of same-sex relationships. In response to a rejection of the license of an application by a judge in Solsona, around 4,000 gays and lesbians showed up to protest on 3 October 1987 in Plaza Mayor in Vic.  This protest was the largest of its kind in Spain at that time for gay and lesbian rights outside a major city.  One of the chants at this protest was "Between the windows, there are also lesbians and behind the balconies there are also maricones." (Spanish: Entre las ventanas también hay lesbianas y detrás de los balcones también hay maricones) El País wrote about their efforts, with the first sentence of the article saying, "Marriage between gays and lesbians has not yet been recognized anywhere in the world, but it has defenders. The authors of this article call for the recognition and equalization of rights - the application of the principle of equality - for all stable couples, be they homo, hetero or bisexuals." (Spanish: El matrimonio entre gays o lesbianas no ha sido reconocido todavía en ningún lugar del mundo, pero tiene defensores. Los autores de este artículo reclaman el reconocimiento y equiparación de derechos -la aplicación del principio de igualdad- para todas las parejas estables, sean homo, hetero o bixesuales.)

From 1993 to 2002, the public discourse around recognition of same-sex couples was that of recognizing de facto couples.

Vitoria became the first Spanish town to allow create a same-sex couples registry, doing so in 1994.  Despite lesbian and gay couples being able to register their relationships with the townhall, there was no real legal impact on the recognition of their partnerships.

Lesbian feminists representing lesbians across the whole pf Spain published a set of political and legal demands in 1991.  These demands centered around marriage equality. 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 institutionalising (affection) relationships, but we do not accept the discrimination suffered by those lesbians and gays that would like to marry and cannot do it’’.

Revolutionary and Cultural Committee for Lesbians (C.R.E.C.U.L.) published the first partnership offer in Spain to work with political parties in 1991.

Starting in 1992, lesbian feminists began to try to meet with political parties regionally and nationally to try to effect their demands for marriage equality.

Reproductive rights

Spain passed its first laws on reproductive assistance in 1988.  They were one of the first countries in the world to create legislation in around the area of assisted reproductive technologies (ART). Frozen embryos could either be donated for use by other couples, donated for research purposes or destroyed. There was no limit on the number of embryos that could be created.

Adoption rights

Lesbian couples have internalized the deep-seated Spanish ideas of National Catholicism that place an important on family.  This has played a role in their activism around adoption rights.

Association rights

The law changed in 1981, and for the first time it the existence of homosexual organizations was allowed, giving lesbians the freedom to create associations without legal or political consequence purely for existing.

Broader LG political movement

Izquierda Unida (IU) was primarily responsible for introducing legislation and supporting policies related to lesbian and gay rights in Spain in this period on both a regional and national level. This would assist in the establishing of a political gay and lesbian agenda in Spain. In supporting equality between same and opposite sex couples in Spain, Izquierda Unida's most important role became serving as an intermediary between gay and lesbian activists and PSOE leadership. The González government rejected the idea of same-sex marriage.

From 1975 to 1985, most politically active homosexuals, primarily men, were not engaged in institutionalized political discourse. Their liberation efforts were often unconventional and they were often hostile to institutionalized decision-making bodies. This was particularly true of gay men in the Madrid during this period.

In 1985, world-wide lesbian and gay liberation movements were shocked by a new, vigorous assault by the Vatican against them.  This assault occurred around the same time the Rock Hudson died and the AIDS epidemic gained world-wide attention. This led to the lesbian and gay political movement in 1985 to start to frame their demands as part of a broader human rights campaign.

By 1986, Spanish gay and lesbian political movements were all but extinct. Many had demobilized. Others had faced organizational crisis they could not overcome. From 1986 to 1991, the political LG movement was split, offering competing political demands.  One group was led by Coordinadora de Frentes de Liberación Homosexual del Estado Español (COFLHEE) and focused on more traditional homosexual liberation, remaining outside politics and institutionalism. The other camp was led by Coordinadora de Iniciativas Gais (CIG), which was created in 1986.  They were supported moderated institutionalization and were more willing to engage in political activism. Starting in 1986, gays and lesbians began to work together again to try to move forward to achieve broader LG rights and change societal views of them so that non-homosexuals did not need to fear them.

Izquierda Unida had integrated lesbian and gay rights into their electoral program by 1986. This integration of lesbian and gay rights into their joint electoral program with Partido Comunista de España would stay, well past the end of the González government. IU first put forward marriage equality in their 1993 electoral platform, seven years before PSOE did the same. 1994 marked the first time a political party, IU, in Spain ever tried to introduce legislation to recognize same-sex civil unions.  They were unsuccessful.

Starting in 1990, lesbian organizations started to work much more frequently with gay men's political groups, especially around the issue of combatting AIDs and securing social support services for lesbians and gays. In 1990, COGAM began to transform by rejecting radical liberation politics.  They left COFLHEE in 1991, and began to organize as a national based organization working on institutional political goals for gays and lesbians.

Prior to 1993, most of the political efforts inside the Spanish Cortes de Diputados focused on the repeal of the 1970 Law on dangerousness and social rehabilitation.  This law had been inhereited in the democratic period in 1978.  Other political efforts were largely focused on the use of police files that referenced lesbians and gays around this law, and the effort to close these files so they could no longer be used. PSOE began to change their position on lesbian and gay rights in 1994.  This came about as their discourse started emphasizing lesbian and gay rights as part of a broader effort to respect human rights and civil rights in Spain, making sure that all citizens had full rights of citizenship in the new Spain. In 1995, the Socialist Group, which included IU, PSOE, Coalición Canaria and the Grupo Mixto, supported and passed legislation which gave de facto recognition to same-sex couples that opposite-sex couples already had. PSOE integrated lesbian and gay rights into their electoral program in 1996. PSOE's first electoral platform related to lesbian and gay rights occurred during the 1996 Spanish general elections when they supported de facto recognition for same-sex couples in the same way such recognition already applied to opposite-couples. PSOE lost the general elections in 1996 after having been in office for fourteen years. They were replaced by the conservative Partido Popular.  This transition marked an important moment in Spanish LG history as it marked the start of a period where homosexuality became very much an important political issue inside Spanish politics.

Electoral programs and promises geared towards gays and lesbians during Spain's general elections.

Elections	Partido Comunista de España / Izquierda Unida	PSOE	ref
1986	- Social and cultural normalization. - Repeal of Article 9.20 of the Disciplinary Regime of the Armed Forces and elimination of homosexuality as a cause of exclusion and expulsion from military service. - Destruction of the police files. - Adoption rights.	- n/a
1989	- Social and cultural normalization. - Anti-discrimination law. - LGBT protections in the workplace - Protoection of Social Security rights. - Prevention of discriminatory behavior in government administration.	- n/a
1993	- Education for the respect of sexual differences. - Limitation of the use of police files. - Criminal protection. - Equalization of treatment between same-sex and opposite-sex couples.	- n/a
1996	- Creation of a register of unmarried couples. - Creating a law that would treat same-sex and opposite-sex couples the same. - Free access to artificial insemination. - Comprehensive sex education plan and review of the educational plans. - Awareness campaigns. - Support for LGBT associations. - Creation of a parliamentary committee on LGBT rights.	- Support for a law legalizing Civil Unions

European lesbian political and legal status

During the early part of the 1980s, the European Court of Justice supported the punishment of two people of the same sex engaging in sexual acts.  It was not until the mid-1980s that the Court's opinion would change, claiming persecution of people engaged in consensual sex acts with people of the same sex were an invasion of privacy.

Starting in 1993, every country that was European Convention on Human Rights and wanted to join the Council of Europe was required to decriminalize homosexuality.  This was spelled out in Document 176/1993. The European Parliament approved a resolution in 1994 on the equality of lesbian and gay rights.

Organizations

Outside the feminist movement, lesbians embraced different models of organization based on their individual identities and political goals.  One group included separatist lesbians, who opposed and fought to abolish patriarchy.  Others included radical lesbians, who believed the broader feminist movement was dominated by heterosexual  women and marked the movement as heterofeminism.

Starting in the 1980s, lesbian organizations began to fight for social, political and legal recognition.  These organizations were often separate from gay men's organizations.

When lesbians work in mixed LGTB groups, they are less ideological than when they were lesbian only groups.

In Valencia in 1983, MAGPV was re-organized and a lesbian group was re-established inside the organization.  This group worked on a number of issues including STD prevention, police harassment against transvestite sex works and on co-organizing homosexual cultural events. Both MAGPV and its lesbian group adopted their own model of identity politics focused around community but rejected Anglo-Saxon models of discourse around sexual identity.

Lambda Collective was founded in 1986 in Valencia.

Grup Lesbia was founded in 1990.  In 1994, the group changed their name to Grup Lesbos.  They came out of Coordinaadora Gai-Lesbiana, founded in 1980 in Barcelona. Women in the group worked with gays, Christians and university students to advance lesbian and gay rights.

Federación Estatal de Gays y Lesbianas (FEGL) was founded in April 1992. The group was largely run by gay men. From the start, they took an institutionalist approach to homosexual liberation, seeking to use political processes to achieve their goals. They were also about denouncing homophobia, but social and legally enshrined forms of this type of discrimination.

The Assembly of Lesbians of Álava was created in 1994.  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.

Lesbianas, Gays, Bisexuales y Transexuales de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid (RQTR) was founded in 1994.

Lesbianas Sin Dudas was a lesbian activist organization, but not in the institutionalized sense; rather, they worked in challenging political ideas in society.

Colectivo de Feministas Lesbianas de Madrid (CFLM) were greatly concerned with increasing the visibility of lesbians in western culture and Spanish culture in particular.

COGAM had its second split in 1996, in the waning days of the González government.

Internationally

From 27 December 1985 to 1 January 1986, Barcelona hosted the  7th International Gay Women and Men Association (IGA) European Conference.  It was organized by  Front d’Alliberament Gai de Catalunya (FAGC) and included a demonstration on 1 January 1986.  Topics at the conference included the issue of lesbians and gay men in the military, AIDs, homosexuality and the Catholic Church, and north–south cooperation.

From 16 – 18 October 1992, the ILGA EC Strategy Planning was held in Sitges, Spain.  The meeting was organized by Coordinadora Gai-Lesbiana de Catalunya (CGL).

From 11 – 17 July 1993, the 15th World ILGA Conference was held Barcelona.  It was organized and hosted by Coordinadora Gai-Lesbiana. The Barcelona City Council and the Catalan Government formally welcomed the Congress to the city.  The Conference included a protest over the repression of the Turkish homosexuals outside the building aof the Turkish commercial delegation.  They also held another protest condemning homophobic crimes at the Colombus Column.

From 21 – 23 October 1994, ILGA Euro Seminar was held Sitges.  The seminar was organised by Coordinadora Gai-Lesbiana de Catalunya (CGL).

From 27 – 31 December 1996, Colectivo de Gais y Lesbianas de Madrid (COGAM) hosted the 18th ILGA European Conference in Madrid.  Attended by 100 delegates, the meeting saw ILGA-Europe become the official umbrella organization for Europe inside the International Lesbian and Gay Association and formally organized under Belgian law.  During the Congress, an action plan was created that was titled “24 ideas for European Commission-led initiatives”.  The goal was to get the European Commission to better support gay and lesbian equality.

The International Day Against LGTBfobia has been celebrated every 17 May since 1990, when General Assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) celebrated that homosexuality was no longer defined as a mental illness.

Lesbians and feminism

Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian and Dutch feminism have all evolved during previous generations to become something of an outsider driven campaign for recognition and rights to a more institutionalized form over time and was recognized as a movement called State feminism.  This incarnation had largely been in place by the time Spain reached the democratic transition period in 1976. Spanish feminism, freed from the constraints of the dictatorship, immediately began a process of trying to convert to state feminism through the use of leftist political parties like PSOE and forging alliances with trade unions.  Some of these institutional feminists, supported by men in power, took their lead from feminist political ideologies coming out of other Western European countries; they were often removed from the feminism being embraced by a younger generation of Spanish feminist who were responding to specific needs they saw in Spanish society. These problems in the broader feminist movement carried over into the early part of the PSOE led González government. Lesbianism and specifically radical lesbianism would play an important role in the feminist movement at this time. Importantly though, these radical lesbians and feminist movements were cognizant of the context in which they existed, serving to inform them about patriarchal Spanish systems during the dictatorship and how various elements of society would respond to their needs.  These lesbian and feminist communities though were not always united, would frequently leak information to try to damage each other and would have fissures leading to groups of women splitting off to form new groups.

Lesbian activists in this period were largely invisible, with years of hard work receiving hardly any credit. The lesbian response to desexualization and invisibilization by feminists more generally in this period was multifaceted.  For some, this status vindicated the needs of their activism and the creation of their lesbian groups and associations.  For other lesbians, they felt bored or angry, and these attitudes turned them away from the broader feminist group to focus on more lesbian related social, artistic and political activities. The actors in the LGBT movement and the feminist movement generally had two approaches to lesbians speaking out against being sexualized and erased; they either pretended not to know this was happening or they got really angry at these lesbians. Queer activists were angry at times because they saw lesbian desire for visibility and recognition as challenging what they saw were more important issues, like transrights, the AIDS epidemic and homophobia.

During the 1980s, a unique form of Spanish identity politics independent of Anglo-Saxon queer identity politics would emerge. It would be largely ignored in this early period of the González government because there were too many existing issues about broader discrimination in society that created cohesion between the LGBT community and feminist communities and because the movement more broadly had been disestablished so broader sharing of these new LGBT political concepts were not as feasible. By the 1990s, lesbian identification with queer politics or queer feminism is viewed by lesbian feminists as a rejection of a lesbian identity and supporting a community that rejects the very existence of a lesbian identity that supports making lesbians invisible. Transfeminism in the 1990s was often called queer bollero feminisms.

Radical lesbians were at the forefront of keeping sexual minorities visible during the early and middle period of González's presidency.

Lesbians were part of the Spanish feminist movement during the 1980s.  They did not organize independently as a lesbian political movement.  They were able to introduce concepts around sexuality into feminist discourse in this period, making the movement more inclusive and assisting in giving the feminist movement more prestige domestically.

Members of lesbian collectives play an important role in continually bringing up sexual options in the Spanish feminist movement in this period.

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.

ESAM faced questions in the early 1980s about motherhood.  Other feminists would sometimes tell them that since they are lesbians, they will never have children.  This was often internalized and left lesbians out of feminist conversations because fertility techniques were not available to lesbian couples, and the only real way lesbians could have children is if they married men.

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.

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, Donostia 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.

The first edition of the Jornadas de Lesbianas de Euskadi took place in Zamalbide  in May 1983.  Around 250 women participated.  They came from four Basque provinces.  Women came who were members of both EHGAM and Colectivo de Lesbianas Feministas.  The major discussion was about lesbians should self-organize in the Basque Country. Lesbians from EHGAM and those from the Colectivos found themselves in conflict as EHGAM militants believed the Jornadas feminist organization method often made lesbian issues secondary to broader feminist goals like abortion, divorce, and gender violence.

Colectivo de Feministas Lesbianas de Barcelona, Colectivo de Feministas Lesbianas de Zaragoza, and Colectivo de Feministas Lesbianas de La Rioja were founded in 1985.

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." In Gipuzkoa, lesbian feminists believed that continued involvement with Asambleas de Mujeres should end in "order not to cut off their access to independent lesbian women and women of the ghetto".

The lesbian-feminist movement was at its height in Spain in 1986 and 1987.

During the 1980s, lesbian political goals often aligned with the feminist movement.  Their mobilization as a group was often around feminist organizations and feminist goals.

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.

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.

The broader feminist community was at times indifferent to this.  Their stated goals included criticism of the heterosexual norm imposed by Spanish culture.  This did not always manifest itself in the questioning of heterosexuality itself, which at times made Spanish feminism appear heterosexual normalizing.  At times, this also made lesbianism appear to be a personal choice that should remain private.

Jornadas Estatales de Lesbianasa took place on 5 June 1988 in Madrid. This supported feminism and lesbian feminism.  Lesbians from the Basque Country attended.

In June 1994, lesbians from Vitoria created Asociación de Lesbianas Alavesas.  This joined the Basque Colectivos de Lesbianas Feministas.

Starting in 1994 and lasting until June 1998, the Basque and Spanish language lesbian feminist magazine Sorginak ceased publication.

Las Goudous was founded in 1996, with the purpose of trying to make lesbian political and social struggles more visible in Spanish feminist spaces.

Lesbian separatism

Dolors Majoral was involved with La Nostra Illa, the Amazonas Network and the Center for Women's Studies in this period, where she continued her work of the earlier period to propagate ideas related to lesbian separatism and radical feminism. These three groups were important in both movements in Catalonia.

In the mid-1980s, the lesbian separatist movement was still largely confined to Barcelona.  There, lesbian separatists congregated in a neighborhood where they had a hairdresser, a Center for Women's Studies, and carpentry shop.  This model did not prove sustainable in the long run, but those involved were able to develop international contacts with other like minded lesbians abroad including those in Germany, France, Australia, the Netherlands and the United States.  They were also able to create a  parallel organization to ILGA which was named the Red de Amazonas. Red de Amazonas drew largely from an existing network called La Mar, who had extensive contact with American lesbian activists.  Between 1987 and 1999, the grew published a couple of journals including Ones de la mar, Labris and Laberint.  The longest print run of these involved Laberint and was 37 issues with its first issue published in 1989.

During this time, lesbian separatists considered a number of different theories about lesbianism. One such theory included that lesbians were a third gender.

Lesbian separatism drew ideologically from difference feminism, but went further because the feminist movement did not provide lesbians with enough to meet their political demands and desires; they wanted something exclusively for lesbians and to not borrow from models by other groups.

Culture

Lesbians often participated in mixed social activities alongside gay men.

Spain is made up of multiple subcultures including Catalan, Basque and Castilian.  These subcultures lead to a situation where Spanish lesbian culture is not unified.

Heterosexual representations of idealized socio-cultural behaviors were during this period important in informing lesbian identities.  This included concepts of monogamy, equating sex with love and sexual activity remaining private between the couple.  Lesbians had these concepts particularly reinforced as homosexuality in Spanish culture was viewed as a feminine attribute.

Before the 1990s, lesbians lacked visibility in Spain.

In the period between 1975 and 1995, gay men, lesbians and women were often lumped together as interest groups or minority groups.  This institutional approach during the transition to these communities impacted how they organized, self-identified and what demands these groups made.

Gema Hassen-Bey won a bronze medal at the 1992 Summer Paralympics.  Born in 1967 in Las Rozas de Madrid, she would not come out of the closet until the 2010s.

Lesbians of this period often tried to subvert accepted sexual identities and gender roles. Lesbianism was about challenging heterosexual assumptions of accepted female behavior.

The term lesbian was not used in Vitoria in the 1980s and mid-1990s. It took a lot of effort by lesbians in the city to get the word to be used regularly to describe them.

There was a generational gap in the lesbian culture that existed in cities like Vitoria until around 2000 and 2001. This was because following the end of the dictatorship, it had been increasingly easier for young lesbians to identify as such and to feel they had rights. They did not need to fight for these things as they already existed. This could make older lesbians feel disconnected from younger lesbians as they did not have the same shared experience.

In 1988, only 16% of Spaniards considered homosexuality acceptable.

The Basque nationalist government promoted the story of Basque lesbian soldier in the Americas Katalin Erauso during the late 1970s and 1980s.

Mili Hernández, an activist lesbian and owner of Berkana, was one of the most influential lesbians in the 1990s. She was one of the first people to put LGBT reference materials in the window of a shop.

HIV and AIDS

See also: HIV/AIDS in Europe § Spain

In the early 1990s, lesbians 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.

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.

On 1 December 1993, Lesbianas Sin Duda (LSD) held a protest outside the Spanish Ministry of Health to protest their policies related to HIV and AIDS. The group was one of the only ones in Spain to trying to actively draw attention to women and lesbians, and their needs as it related HIV and AIDS, both in treatment and in terms of health related policies. Fefa Vila was a member of LSD involved in these efforts.

Pride (Spanish: Orgullo)

See also: Madrid Pride

During the 1980s, the number of participants at Madrid's Pride celebrations dropped precipitously. 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 the city. Lesbians would continue to be at the forefront of organizing Pride well into the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The Collective of Canary Homosexuals and the Canary Collective of Liberation of the Lesbian Woman organized a 27 June 1980 pride event, one of two held that year in the Canary Islands. The Canary Collective of Homosexual Men and Women organized a rally on 25 June 1980 in Tenerife at the Palais Royal. About 300 people attended the event, including union members who supported the event.

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.

In 1989, Murcia Pride took place for the first time. Lambda Collective started organizing Pride events in Valencia starting in 1992, after an absence of marching for many years.

In 1995, Madrid Pride organizers decided to de-couple Pride from the Stonewall date and to have events on the weekend after it.  Organizers also wanted to make it more fun, so that lesbians and gays who were not militant would feel more comfortable and have fun while participating and so organizers could also increase sponsorship opportunities.

The first time a float appeared at a Madrid Pride event was on 28 June 1996.  That year was also the second year that Pride was a weekend affair.  Since then, the political aspects of Madrid Pride have been overshadowed by continued commercialization of the event as it attracted ever more media attention.

Discrimination and harassment

Women had received electroshock therapy in the last days of Franco continued to suffer the consequences of this conversion therapy in this period.

During the 1990s in Spain, lesbians often experiences verbal and physical abuse;  employers, schools and universities often had unclear harassment policies specifically as it related to rights of lesbians, making it harder for lesbians to act against abuses in institutional settings.

Language

Lesbio does not appear in the Diccionario de la lengua española until 1884, and is also only used to define the word marimacho. Lesbiana does not appear with its own definition until 1984 and continued to be defined until 1989, before being removed for a few years. bollera first appeared in the Diccionario de la lengua española in 1989. It is defined as a word used to describe lesbians. It would not be until 2001 where the vulgar nature of the word is added to the definitions.

Media

Berkana opened in 1993 in Madrid,  This was the first homosexual bookstore to open in Spain.  In the stores early years, there were very few available titles and many members of Spain's lesbian and gay community were scared to be seen going inside because of continued stigmatization of the homosexual community. It went on to become the largest and most influential LGBT bookstore in Spain.

Literature

Spanish lesbian literature has three main periods. The first is from 1964 to 1975, during the last years of the Franco regime. The second is the transition period of 1975 to 1985. The last period was from 1985 to the present. Lesbian writers did not start to come out until the 1990s.

Egales is and 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.

The costumbrismo literary movement had entered Spanish lesbian literature community by 1998. Libertad Morán is an example of one such Spanish lesbian writer using this style.

Sauna by María Jaén in 1987 was an important piece of lesbian literary fiction, depicting a public bathhouse as a place where women could find physical and emotional encounters during the previous historical period.

Art

Some lesbian artists in this period, particularly Cabello/Carceller, used plastics in their art as part of shaping female genitalia to try to change normatize understandings of the sexual identity of both women in general and lesbians specifically.  The more important works of this kind by Cabello/Carceller were  “Ya no me importa tu mirada” (1994) and “acércate, deséame, ámame, sí....pero cállate” (1996).

Azucena Vieites was an important artist in this period. Her artwork referenced lesbian cultural norms, and showed that affection among lesbians could be intense.

LSD (Lesbianas Sin Duda)

Lesbianas Sin Duda (LSD) was an artist collective founded in 1993 in the barrio of Lavapies in Madrid. Members included Estíbaliz Sadaba, Virginia Villaplana, Itziar Okariz, Azucena Vietes, Fefa Vila, Beatriz Preciado, Carmela García, María José Belbel, Marisa Maza, Liliana Couso Domínguez, Floy Krouchi, Katuxa Guede, Pilar Vázquez and Arantza Gaztañaga. They were identified as more explicitly queer than many of their contemporaries in their conceptual and theoretical approaches to art and activism.

During 1993 and continuing into the next few years, LSD worked on drawing attention to the impact of HIV and AIDS on women and on lesbians through art. They teamed up with a number of other organizations as part of these efforts, including ACT UP (France) and La Radical. They held photography exhibits, designed posters and created fanzines inspired by Barbara Kruguer as part of these efforts. One of their goals was to stop allowing others in the broader AIDS and HIV activist community to represent lesbians and lesbian sexual activities, and to give lesbians their own voice in describing their sexual practices as it related to AIDS and HIV.

The work of LSD artists often showcased the power of friendship as a motif. The body of work produced by LSD artists also included photographic depictions of lesbians, acknowledging their existence and challenging a status quo that often denies them visibility. Menstruosidades y Es-cultura lesbiana in 1995 was one of the most important exhibitions for LSD photographers. Some of the photos were then used at the 1996 EuroGayPride in Copenhagen, where they were enlarged. The piece "Desnudar el desnudo" was published in the Barcelona-based magazine El Viejo Topo in December 1995.

Movies

The Real Decreto of 1977 led to the creation of the Spanish S-rating for films “whose content or theme could damage the spectator’s sensibility”.  This rating primarily impacted lesbian erotic films. This law was changed in 1983, replaced by the more internationally recognized X-rating.

Dark Habits (Spanish: Entre tinieblas) was released in 1983. Written by Pedro Almodóvar, it featured Julieta Serrano as a lesbian Mother Superior of a Spanish convent. The film was revolutionary in breaking the mold of conservative depictions of lesbians in Spanish cinema by using Serrano's character as a vehicle to criticize the Roman Catholic Church and by challenging the Franco driven view that only two type of women existed: decent conservative women and evil, sexually promiscuous liberal women. The film was rejected by the Cannes Film Festival on account of its apparently sacrilegious treatment of religion, and although it had its premiere on 9 September at the Venice Film Festival, some of the organizing committee considered it blasphemous and anti-Catholic and it was not shown in the official section. Almodóvar's provocative and in your face dealing with homosexuality Entre tinieblas and his 1982 film Laberinto de pasiones were viewed by parts of the LGB community as a necessary responsive to the oppressive nature of state-censorship during the Franco period that condemned and erased them.

Liberal depictions of lesbians by lesbian film makers would not begin until much later, during the 1990s. Influential films of this period included 1996's Costa Brava by director Marta Balletbó-Coll and Ana Simón Cerezo.

In 1996, Fundación Triángulo organized the International Festival of Lesbian, Gay and Transexual Cinema in Madrid.  It would go on to become an important tool for social change by normalizing the depictions of lesbians and gays.

Television

Public television had been regularly broadcast in Spain since 1956. Lesbians appeared on Spanish television for the first time in 1995. Mar de dudas (1995) was the first program to feature a lesbian couple when the characters Olga and Monica were introduced to viewers.  Their plot line involved their desire to have a child and find a semen donor. Viewers got to help decide who would be the semen donor.  While the show  lasted only one season, Olga and Monica generated intense debate inside Spain.  

TV3 produced Nissaga de poder, which ran from 1996 to 1998.  Using a format similar to the 1980s American serial Falcon Crest, the show followed Montsolís family.  The youngest daughter in the family was Mariona  and portrayed by Núria Prims.  The character fell in love with her best friend Inés, portrayed by Alicia González Láa. In the show's series finale, the couple inform Mariona's family of their intention to go to the Netherlands and marry.

Theater

The lesbian theater group Grup Gram Teatre was created in 1984 by Ammann and Dolors Majoral.