For the past five years, Barcelona’s LGTBI Centre has been promoting the culture, participation and comprehensive assistance of LGTBIQA+ people and their families and friends.
Over the course of these five years, the LGTBI Centre has consolidated its free direct support services for LGBTQIA+ people and their families and friends, in coordination with entities and various administrations. It has done so through information, guidance and primary care, reception and legal advice services, advice for trans people and in-house psychological support services.
These services are complemented and reinforced by various relational, therapeutic, social, activism, leisure, volunteering, meeting, reporting, heath assistance and advice spaces and services run by different entities that are housed in the centre.
The LGTBI Centre also offers and develops an extensive cultural and awareness-raising programme, organised into three-monthly cycles and open to everyone, with the aim of promoting the rights of LGTBQIA+ people through cultural and artistic creation.
In these five years, it has also created a community of people that use the services of the LGTBI Centre, attend the activities and use it as a meeting and reference point.
These are the people that make the Centre work and give it meaning; the people that give it impetus and breathe life into it; the people who enrich their perspective through their participation and involvement.
It is for this reason that we wanted to pay tribute to this whole community, to all of you, with this compilation video featuring a bunch of good memories: the parties we’ve had, the open days, the meetings, the celebrations, the annual conferences and many other events.
Five years of shared challenges and journeys
It was on 19 January 2019 that the centre first opened its doors: a three-storey building located in the Sant Antoni neighbourhood, with spaces designed for providing information and offering specialised assistance, for making queries, organising cultural activities and for hosting the work of LGTBIQA+ organisations.
Shortly after opening, the Centre suffered an LGTBI-phobic and fascist attack which, far from putting a stop to its activities, highlighted the solidarity and empathy of the local community of Sant Antoni, and the city as a whole, who mobilised spontaneously to show their support for the Centre and to reject hate.
This is not the only challenge the centre has had to face: in March 2020, when it had been open a little over a year, the LGTBI Centre had to close its doors due to the Covid-19 pandemic and during that year and 2021, had to redesign its services to adapt them to the various health restrictions, offering activities and assistance online.
Gradually, in 2022 the Centre started to resume its in-person activities and assistance and once again began to feel the warmth of the community of people who use its facilities and services and form part of its projects.
Finally, 2023 has been a year of consolidating the services, further raising the visibility of the Centre and showing how it responds to the needs of LGTBIQA+ people and their families and friends.
We would like to thank those of you who have been a part of this five year journey and to celebrate it with you with a special programme which we’ll be rolling out over the course of 2024. Keep an eye on this website, on our social media profiles and also on your emails, because we’ll gradually be revealing what we’ve got planned to share, celebrate and continue improving.
Local festival in Sant Antoni 2024
The first stop on this celebratory journey will be on Saturday 20 January from 8 pm to 11 pm, at the Jardinets de l’Alguer (Avinguda de Mistral, 10), as part of the Sant Antoni Local Festival. There will be a fun bingo-bollo game, courtesy of Ana Joven and Ester Naranjo, and a DJ set from Voodoo Sound System.