“Tears. Because I couldn’t stop crying while preparing this page,” he writes. Aragonese cartoonist Marina Velasco (1997). Two young gay men are seen embracing in a cell. francoism. One is Arnau, the other is her boyfriend, whom she met in Barcelona in 1970. Two police officers saw them kissing and arrested them. “I’d rather not talk about what happened when they put us in the van…” he admitted today. Until ten years ago, after going to therapy, he could not accept what happened that day. His family disowned him and sent him to England to “fix” him. Hers is one of six true stories the illustrator has made visible. ‘Don’t be forgotten’ (Fnac-Salamandra Graphics Award 2023), comic book debut, a mural references What it means to be a part of this in the last century LGTBIQ+ community in Spain. A title for the latest additions ‘May the end of the world find us dancing’ (Dome), here Barcelona’s experienced cartoonist Sebas Martín (1961) sets aside his usual traditional and contemporary comic strip with gay themes to tell a love story between two men in the turbulent Barcelona of 1935 and the months before the Civil War.
“There has been a lot of talk about this In the post-war period, oppression and dictatorshipbut there is uncertainty about how it happened at that time. Second Republic -Martín points-. It seemed like everyone was very left-wing, but there was a lot of machismo, and although being gay or lesbian wasn’t punishable, they could arrest you for a public scandal and extort money from you. Moreover, communists and anarchists viewed homosexuality as a bourgeois immorality. And for those on the right, if you were a worker and gay, you would be accused of being evil and perverted.”
Martín writes a realistic and documented story about Tomás, a young and unassuming office worker from the then working-class town of Lorca. poblenouShe falls in love with Basilio, a tough worker and boxer in night-time Barcelona who has not yet come out of the closet and is a traitor to the world. Chinatown and Paral·lelwith Legendary places like La Criolla. The character is based on a friend of the cartoonist’s uncle, and his firsthand anecdotes help craft the story.
Velasco’s comic strip also takes its seed from his family history. “My great-aunt had a friend all her life. It was an open secret, but it was never openly said at family gatherings that they were a couple. I didn’t want stories of people who had to keep silent and hide out of fear. There were no references and medical guidelines said homosexuality was a disease that had to be treated with ‘electroshock’.” “A person who sees, has consequences that should be forgotten. The people I interviewed still want to maintain their anonymity today.”
Many of their testimonies were subjected to conversion therapies under the control of the Church. ‘cure’ homosexuality. “They continued to exist – he condemns -. It’s a huge failure for Ayuso to lift the ban and repeal some of the trans and LGTBI laws in Madrid. In Italy you also see people taking away their freedom and rights.”
Rights are at stake
Martín points out this: “In some streets of Madrid they threaten you and shout at you ‘fucking faggot, go back to Chueca or Malasaña’. Older homosexuals We warn today’s young people that just as it is very difficult to obtain the rights they have today, it is also very easy to lose them.. always had homophobes We were attacked but now They think they are legitimate with parties like Vox and PP and they are the order of the day. And you see the atrocities RussiaProhibiting any display of affection between persons of the same sex or Arab countries or Argentina…This is scary a widespread wave of hatred. You can never let your guard down“.
Velasco agrees: “Even though things have gotten better here, the hate speech has gotten worse in recent years. There are still people looking bad at you because we’re two girls holding hands. And when you see that you’re ‘Them,’ you’re afraid to come and look.”
The story Martín tells ends just before the coup that started the Civil War. Now write a continuation again on low heat. “Imagining what would happen to them during conflict and dictatorship.” Both comics recall that Franco formalized the persecution of homosexuality with the amendment in 1954. the law of lazy men and bandits, Previously, homosexuals were already subject to “mistreatment, humiliation and arbitrary arrests by the police and phalangist groups” and could be subjected to forced labor.
The 1930s cartoonist says: ” homosexuality It was associated with the lumpen, the low life. One of the things that happened in Chinatown in Barcelona. However, there were also homosexuals in the working class, although they had no voice. “Tomás’ character wants a normal life with the person he loves, away from that dirty world.”
Others Velasco interviewed today also fear having to go to a hospital. Nursing home. “They cannot imagine living or sharing the same room with people of their generation who insulted them when they were young, rejected them, detained them, mistreated them, and made their lives impossible.”