A journey through the historic memory of the LGTBI community, focused on a critical examination of the different stages along the way, and spotlighting key figures and spaces within the city that have borne witness to the fight for freedom. This is the goal of “Memory: Absences and Presences”, the programme of activities and events that’s aiming to get things moving again after the summer. The whole of the programme is a presencial one, in order to allow people to be together once again and get back into the swing. However, prior registration is necessary for all the different activities, and face masks are mandatory. It will also be possible to follow many of the events online via YouTube.
Photojournalist Hanna Jarzabek is once again exhibiting at the LGBTI Centre, after a gap of two years. This time she’s presenting us with “Autumn Flowers”, an exhibition that will be open for visits from 11 October until 31 January, and that highlights the experiences of a group of LGBTI people over the age of sixty. Through these images, Jarzabek pays tribute to a generation that lived through the post civil war period and the Franco era, and that grew up in a closed, oppressive environment characterised by a lack of freedoms. The images decry the fact that so many older LGBTI people are effectively forced back into the closet when they have no choice but to go into a care home.
A tribute exhibition that also takes a closer look at our own times. Jarzebek will be sharing exhibition space with Arxiu Post-It, an installation created by artist and activist Diego Marchante in memory of the LGBTI-phobic attack by right wing extremists in January 2019. Marchante has added hundreds of notes left by local people at the door of the building in Carrer de Borrell to send out a clear message: that love can defeat hatred.
Two years on, the historic routes are being revived. On the Saturdays 16 October, 13 November, 18 December and 29 January, “LGBTI: Memories of Repression and Resistance” invites us to take an urban route following the traces left behind by 100 years of struggle.
Collaboration with the Teatre Condal and the collective La Cicatriz
The LGBTI Centre continues working to collaborate with the city’s institutions and cultural collectives. The goal is to promote quality cultural programming that highlights sexual and gender diversity in a cross-cutting way. Accordingly, on 25 October, the Teatre Condal will be offering a talk after the performance of Una llum tímida [A Timid Light], a show that’s halfway between theatre and music in which the collective La Cicatriz tells a story about two young women teachers who fall in love in Franco’s Barcelona. The conversation, in which the performers themselves take part together with Paulina Blanco and Katy Pallàs, aims to raise awareness of the difficulties experienced by lesbian women during the dictatorship.
Historic memory beyond the confines of the city
Here, the LGBTI Centre wants to go beyond the context of the city of Barcelona itself. To do so, different activists and experts look back over the struggles for sexual freedom in other parts of Spain during the latter years of the Franco regime and the transition at the round table, “Spaces of Resistance: our own Stonewall” (23 November). Furthermore, they’ll be looking at the official mechanisms for the production of memory within the framework of the process of the colonisation of Latin America (11 January).
A selection of films brought to us by Mostra FIRE!!
This autumn, films will once again be shown in the auditorium. On this occasion, the films have been chosen by Mostra FIRE!! from the Casal Lambda. Their choice aims to bring to life the testimonies of older people who were pioneers in the fight for LGBTI rights, as can be seen in the French production Les invisibles (12 November); to get to know the careers of women film makers who helped to establish the foundations of queer cinema (Dykes, Camera, Action!, 10 December), and to take a trip to Sweden to discover how the LGTBI movement emerged in the Scandinavian country (An Army of Lovers, 14 January).
Literary presentations
In the literary sphere, the LGBTI Centre will be offering an online presentation of the book Invertidos y rompepatrias: Marxismo, anarquismo y desobediència sexual y de género en el Estado espanyol (1868-1982) [Inverts and Nation-Breakers: Anarchism and Sexual and Gender Disobedience in the Spanish State (1868-1982)], a work in which Piro Subrat examines how the relationship between homosexuality and the left has evolved over the years. To take place on 9 November.
We’ll also be exploring a space in the city that has witnessed many nights of avant-garde liberation and debauchery. On 14 December, Paco Villar invites us to return to La Criolla: La puerta dorada del Barrio Chino. [La Criolla: The Golden Gate of the Barrio Chino.] The book talks about a space that has been catalogued as “a den of vice”, a bar that brought together everyone from the cream of Barcelona’s transvestites to some of the best known intellectuals in Catalonia and in Europe.
Lastly, the LGBTI Centre will pay tribute to activist Empar Pineda, a key figure in the history of the fight for women’s rights, particularly in terms of making lesbians more visible, and defending the right to abortion. On 20 January, Miriam Solá will be moderating a discussion between Pineda and writer Kattalin Miner, the author of Empar Pineda: Porque se lo pidió el cuerpo.
