The 5th Festival of Queer Culture in Spanish concludes in London highlighting the violence exerted by Francoism against LGTBIQA+ people
November 27th, 2025
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The festival’s closing event honoured the lives of essential figures such as Laura Frenchkiss, Carmen de Mairena, Encarnita Duclán and Perla Zuñiga.
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“Dealing with queer history means confronting not only Francoist repression, but also its continuation: attempts to erase these lives even fifty years later,” — Iago Mora Arcas
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“These lives show creativity, affection and the capacity to challenge norms even in the most controlled spaces,” — Moisés Fernández Cano
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“Manolito Soler was far more than a victim: he was a person with agency who lived openly as queer at a time when that was almost impossible,” — Daniela Ferrández Pérez
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“We must not forget that Francoism was a deeply corrupt and violent regime, but also one obsessed with presenting itself as fundamentally virile,” — Víctor M. Ramírez
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“In a context of migration and cultural plurality, the festival succeeds in weaving networks of support, solidarity and belonging,” — Jorge Gárriz
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Sara Torres, Daniel Saldaña París, Laura Hojman and Ángelo Néstore were among the key guests of the 2025 edition.
The Luis Cernuda Auditorium at the Instituto Cervantes in London was chosen as the venue to close the 5th Festival of Queer Culture in Spanish on 25 November, with the panel The Legacies of Francoism for the LGBTQ+ Community. The event was presented by Jorge Gárriz, director of the festival; and Víctor Ugarte, director of the Instituto Cervantes in London; and moderated by Iago Mora Arcas, Head of Equality, Diversity and Wellbeing at the Society of Spanish Researchers in the United Kingdom (SRUK/CERU).
The panel focused on issues related to the persecution of lesbians in religious spaces, gender-dissident archives and re-education centres for homosexuals. The participating experts in historical memory and LGBTQ+ studies were: Moisés Fernández Cano, author of the doctoral thesis Unveiling Madrid: queer intimacies under Franco (EUI, 2024) and current president of MariCorners; Daniela Ferrández Pérez, author of A defunción dos sexos (Xerais, 2022) and researcher on LGTBIQ+ historical memory in Galicia; and Víctor M. Ramírez, author of Peligrosas y Revolucionarias. Las disidencias sexuales en Canarias durante el franquismo y la transición (Tamaimos, 2019) and former Director General for Diversity of the Government of the Canary Islands (2019–2023).
Recovering erased histories: Sápphic invisibility and queer lives under Franco
Researcher Moisés Fernández Cano presented a critical reflection on the invisibility of sápphic women in Francoist archives. Based on his doctoral research on queer everyday lives in mid-20th-century Madrid, Fernández emphasised that the repression of desire between women was systematic but difficult to trace.
“Out of more than 12,000 files reviewed, only six mention relationships between women,” he noted, stressing that this scarcity does not imply absence, but rather different mechanisms of control exercised through religious, psychiatric or state-run institutions such as the Patronato de Protección de la Mujer.
Despite this lack of documentation, his work rescues stories filled with affection, agency and resistance. One case involved two upper-class women whose relationship unfolded through letters, discreet meetings in central Madrid churches and a rented P.O. box to escape family surveillance. “Two years since we began to love and suffer,” wrote one; “your faithful and humble beloved,” signed the other. A complaint filed by the military husband of one of the women was eventually dismissed to avoid public scandal, and their trace disappears from the archive—illustrating, Fernández argued, “the documentary fragility of so many queer lives”.
His most extensive and surprising case concerns a woman from Granada expelled from several convents for “serious lesbianism,” who eventually created—together with a companion—a false religious order that operated in Madrid for over twenty years. “They maintained the façade for two decades, with a mansion in Recoletos, a chapel and even recognition from the bishopric,” he explained. Their intimate relationship with a young resident and the tensions following their breakup ultimately brought the case to Francoist authorities, revealing a story that combined sacredness, desire and survival under a heavily surveilled regime.
Fernández concluded by stressing the importance of recovering these stories without resorting solely to narratives of victimhood. “These lives show creativity, affection and the ability to challenge norms even in the most controlled spaces,” he said. For the researcher, reconstructing their trajectories is an act of historical justice and symbolic repair: a way to restore presence to those who, despite loving and existing under repression, were pushed to the margins of the archive.
Queer Galicia re-emerges: the personal album of Manolito Soler
Researcher Daniela Ferrández Pérez presented a preview of her work on an exceptional discovery for LGTBIQ+ historical memory in Galicia: the personal album of Manolito Soler, an openly queer artist who worked in Galicia, Barcelona and elsewhere in Spain during the Franco regime.
Ferrández recalled that Galician queer memory has suffered profound exclusion from state narratives: “Galicia has almost always been left out of centralist accounts of queer memory under Francoism,” she noted, adding that even major documentary productions “do not mention Galicia even once.”
The album—located in January 2025 and composed of intimate portraits, studio photographs, press clippings and promotional material—allows researchers to reconstruct Soler’s biography from his childhood in Vigo to his consolidation as a variety artist. One of the most significant contributions is the documentation of his military service in a disciplinary workers’ battalion in Morocco, units that functioned as forced labour for young men deemed “disaffected” or of “dubious morals”. Yet the images reveal a surprising reality: “What we see here is not that sober, militarised masculinity… I see something else,” Ferrández explained, referring to scenes of physical closeness, expressive freedom and artistic performances among the troops.
Ferrández emphasised that Soler appears to have played a central entertainment role in the barracks, which may have afforded him certain freedoms: “These images clearly show that he performed songs, skits and revue numbers during military service.” His later career confirms this vocation: he performed in Havana, Mallorca and especially Barcelona’s Barrio Chino, where he built networks with other sexual dissidents and was mentioned in trans memoirs such as those of Pierrot. Back in Vigo, he continued performing in cabarets linked to Karina Falagán and became a beloved figure of the city’s nightlife, even receiving community tributes during the dictatorship.
Ferrández closed by calling for a more complex and reparative memory: “Manolito Soler was far more than a victim: he was a person with agency, who lived openly as queer at a time when that was almost impossible.” For her, his personal album not only reconstructs an exceptional biography but also illuminates the capacity of communities—in the military, in neighbourhoods, in cabarets—to create spaces of affection and resistance. The push to honour him continues: residents of Teis have long been calling for a street to bear his name.
Punishment and ideology: Francoism’s control over homosexual people
Finally, researcher and author Víctor M. Ramírez closed the panel with a talk on the mechanisms of punishment exercised by Francoism against homosexual people. “We must not forget that Francoism was a deeply corrupt and violent regime, but also one obsessed with presenting itself as fundamentally virile,” he stated, underlining the ideological dimension through which the dictatorship constructed its model of citizenship.
Ramírez explained how the regime viewed homosexuality as a deviation to be controlled, corrected and penalised, relying on two pillars: national-Catholicism and Francoist psychiatry, which pathologised all sexual dissidence. He recalled that the 1954 reform of the Law of Vagrants and Thugs formally incorporated homosexuality as a category of social danger. “Internment was the intended solution, in rehabilitation centres operating as trade schools or agricultural penal colonies,” he detailed. Furthermore, he noted that at the time no distinction was made between sexual orientation and gender identity: “Trans women were categorised as an extreme case of homosexuality,” he added.
In contrast, sexually dissident women suffered different repressive mechanisms. “They were subjected less often to the Law of Social Danger; their control was mainly familial, religious or psychiatric,” he explained. Many were sent to institutions run by religious orders that confined women deemed “wayward,” while others ended up in psychiatric centres where, according to preserved testimonies, some lesbian women were subjected to treatments such as electroshock therapy allegedly intended to “cure” them.
Ramírez also reviewed the main centres of internment for homosexual people, including the prisons of Huelva, Badajoz and Carabanchel, as well as the Agricultural Penal Colony of Tefía in Fuerteventura. “The intention in Tefía was to mould them so that they would reintegrate as respectable, honest, appropriate and heterosexualised individuals,” he said. Drawing on testimonies from former inmates Juan Curbelo and Octavio García, he described a system based on extreme discipline, physical and psychological abuse, humiliation and forced labour—such as stone-cutting and wall-building—under conditions of food scarcity. He concluded by recalling a recent milestone: “This 28 January, the Spanish Government will officially designate Tefía as a site of democratic memory.”
Preserving lives at risk of erasure: Laura Frenchkiss, Carmen de Mairena and Encarnita Duclán
Iago Mora Arcas, from SRUK/CERU and moderator of the event, highlighted the fragility of queer memory through the cases of Laura Frenchkiss, Carmen de Mairena and Encarnita Duclán—trans women and key figures of Spain’s nightlife and LGTBQ+ activism. Frenchkiss, a sex worker and political refugee, lost all her personal archives upon her death in 2021; Carmen de Mairena, TV icon and drag queen, had her belongings discarded when she entered a care home; and Encarnita Duclán, activist and pioneer in Valencia, was buried under a name she did not recognise and her documents were destroyed.
“Dealing with queer history means confronting not only Francoist repression, but also its continuation: attempts to erase these lives even fifty years later,” Mora Arcas stressed, underscoring the urgency of preserving their memory.
Five years reconstructing queer memory in Spanish
Held in London from 19 to 25 November, the 5th Festival of Queer Culture in Spanish concluded by reaffirming its role as a consolidated cultural space for sexual dissidence in the United Kingdom. Jorge Gárriz, responsible for the event’s closing remarks, emphasised that the festival has become “a true map of resistances,” a place where LGBTQ+ people of the Spanish-speaking diaspora can recognise themselves, share memory and build community. With growing visibility and symbolic weight, this fifth edition positions London as one of the most significant cultural hubs for the creation and circulation of queer thought in Spanish. “In a context of migration and cultural plurality, the festival succeeds in weaving networks of support, solidarity and belonging,” Gárriz noted.
The expansion and diversification of content marked a qualitative leap in this year’s programme, which combined literature, cinema, theatre, music, podcasts and panels on historical analysis. For Gárriz, this breadth demonstrates that queer culture “is not a genre, but a prism through which multiple forms of expression are narrated.” The inclusion of themes such as historical memory, the legacy of Francoism or sexual dissidence in religious spaces made it possible to reflect on a queer Hispanic genealogy marked by oppression, but also by creativity and resistance. “The festival does not only look to the present: it claims a legacy,” he concluded.
In 2025, the festival paid tribute to the memory of artist and poet Perla Zuñiga and presented an exclusive video of her recital during the festival’s first edition in 2021, available on the website.
The festival combined cultural activities with discussions on historical memory and the political legacies that still affect LGBTQ+ communities. Sara Torres, Daniel Saldaña París, Laura Hojman, Ángelo Néstore, Ana Garriga and Carmen Urbita (Las Hijas de Felipe), and Ana Quiroga were among the invited figures. Topics explored included the lives and works of Agustín Gómez Arcos, Mario Bellatin and Francis Bacon in 1990s Madrid; the lives of nuns in the 16th and 17th centuries; the legacies of Francoism for LGBTQ+ people; and a stage piece centred on rethinking the concept of tenderness according to Anne Dufourmantelle.
Over the years, the event has grown beyond the traditional concept of a festival offering content specifically on queer culture in Spanish, becoming a doubly safe space giving voice to artists and writers to share their visions and perspectives on queer experiences related to the Spanish-speaking world. It has thus become a platform for reflection and research. Camila Sosa, Eva Baltasar, Luisgé Martín, Pol Guasch, Christo Casas, Ariel Florencia Richards, Paco Bezerra, Elizabeth Duval, Paco y Manolo, Carlos Barea, Eddi Circa and Fernando López Rodríguez are among the many names who have taken part in festival activities since its creation in 2021.
The event was sponsored by the Embassy of Spain in the United Kingdom, Spain Culture & Science UK, Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) through its PICE programme for the internationalisation of Spanish culture, the Instituto Cervantes in London, Hackney Council and its Hackney PRIDE 365 programme, the Embassy of Mexico in the UK, and Diversitas Institute; as well as supported by Latin American House, CLAUK: Coalition of Latin Americans in the UK, SRUK/CERU: Society of Spanish Researchers in the UK, SpainU, Lady Olé, Gay’s The Word, Cinema Mentiré, The Poetry Translation Centre, and the venues The Divine, Hundred Years Gallery, Rio Cinema and the October Gallery.
PRESS for FCQEL.