On November 23, 1995, more than two decades after the dictator’s death, a law named Hazard and social rehabilitation emerged. This norm, approved in 1970, received new life in the persecution of homosexuals with an amendment introduced on July 15, 1954. The Vagrants and Fraudsters Act explicitly authorized the detention and confinement of perceived homosexuals in private institutions. The word gay appears in those old records, reflecting the language of the time.
Despite the rough edges of those early texts, the reality was clear: people with non-normative sexual orientations faced persecution under Franco, often forced to conceal their identities from friends, family, and public officials, including bosses and colleagues. They had to continue with their lives while hiding who they were. Many sought professional sectors where their sexual orientation did not arouse suspicion. In the first decades of the twentieth century, entertainment became a relatively forgiving arena, expanding with new industries such as recording and film alongside the long-standing theater tradition that had welcomed many artists, including composers, lyricists, set designers, actors, screenwriters, poster artists, painters and costume designers. Through these crafts, creators could express their cultural tastes and sexual identities to the limit allowed by law, censorship, and social acceptance.
In 1949, Antonio Mas Guindal wrote the screenplay for his first film, including a scene in which a con man dies. Showing a con man meeting his end could be striking for the era, and Oscar Wilde’s name appeared in that moment. A later script from 1956 included an entire sequence featuring a transvestite, where a character comes out while removing a Manila shawl and an audience of excited men recognizes him as a man. Though the scene was cut from the final draft, the writers clearly experimented with inclusive representation. This is discussed in depth in Santiago Lomas Martínez’s study of queer creators in Spanish cinema during the Franco regime, published by Laertes.
The idea of a queer retrospective helps examine how complex sexual and gender identities were projected in past oppositional roles. During the Franco era, sexuality fell into a binary: heterosexual or homosexual. Yet today we broaden that lens. What constitutes being gay, where does homosexuality begin or end, and how do people who desire men but live as heterosexual fit into these labels? The term queer serves to reflect a spectrum of possibilities within culture, including aesthetic preferences, identifications, or narrative interests that may not align with a single label. It is a step toward moving beyond black-and-white categories toward a more nuanced understanding of identity.
Even though the term queer is modern and expansive, most professionals highlighted in Lomas Martínez’s analysis were gay men. He notes, however, that within Franco’s Spain, the cinema world could still include trans or lesbian individuals, though this occurred for statistical reasons more than open display.
When discussing sexuality, culture, and identities, conversations are shaped by the cultural discourses of the time. Trans people, for example, did not have the terminology or visibility they would later. In the 50s and 60s, many felt different or beyond the options then available, and terms evolved in the 70s with new descriptions such as transvestite and then transgender. Lesbian women faced barriers to creative leadership, and the book acknowledges that trans or lesbian figures existed in Francoist cinema, even if in small numbers. The growth of production power, especially for men, shaped who could get projects funded and who could tell certain stories. Some investors even suggested that gay men were not entirely male, a claim that reveals the era’s tensions and stereotypes.
mourning divas
During the Franco regime, queer creators often gravitated toward melodramas and musicals featuring tormented female leads. This approach differed from analyses of the work of authors like Tennessee Williams, where not all characters were coded as gay. The use of female protagonists allowed writers to place men in the role of objects of desire, while still addressing issues around desire and its fulfillment without confronting masculine heroism directly. Filmmakers and writers such as Juan de Orduna and Rafael de León crafted moments in which love, longing, and social constraint could be examined through female experiences. These patterns persisted in later generations of writers, reflecting an ongoing exploration of gender and desire in cinema.
During the Franco era, creators had to manage visibility carefully. Even when close colleagues knew about a person’s sexuality, public exposure had to stay within accepted norms. An open secret could be tolerated, but not made explicit in public life.
In that period, visibility and usefulness often went hand in hand. One filmmaker, Juan de Orduña, connected with audiences through a string of successful projects and large-scale productions, earning a position of influence within the regime-approved cinema landscape. His work on later projects demonstrated how endings mattered because they sealed the film’s ideology for the audience as they left the theater. Conservative conclusions were common, and violations of social norms rarely received rewards in these narratives.
From “weird” melodrama to “camp” sicalipsis
Queer creators in Spanish cinema of the Franco era were highlighted at a Cine Doré screening at the Spanish Film Library, with a private balcony session featuring the moonfilm Louis Saslavsky, filmed in 1962. Starring Lola Flores, Carmen Sevilla, and Paquita Rico, the film marks a pivotal moment in this expressionist line of cinema, according to Santiago Lomas Martínez. The era from 1962 onward shows a shift toward camp and humor that had roots in earlier forms like Cuplé. The balcony of the moon film acts as a hinge between melodrama and camp: a world of excess, irony, and double meanings around desire becomes more visible. Lola Flores’s performances, expressive of a modern sensibility toward gender and desire, hint at the evolution that later directors such as Pedro Almodóvar would explore, while also hinting at the broader cultural currents of the time.