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How Murcia celebrates a very special 20th anniversary this year: A milestone for treating others with equal respect
Murcia has come a long way in the last two decades when it comes to equality of treatment for all in society, but there is still much work to be done
As a foreigner living in Spain, sometimes it’s easy to feel like an ‘other’ and like you are being pointed out or even, dare it be said, discriminated against at times. The moniker ‘guiri’ is sometimes used in a derogatory way to refer to tourists and northern Europeans in Spain, whose skin burns more easily than Spanish skin does and whose mouths pronounce Spanish words in a rounded, funny sort of way, although some expats have managed to adopt and adapt the word ‘guiri’ as their own, wearing it as a badge of honour.
As discrimination goes, it’s not the worst a person can experience. In the vast majority of cases, the Spanish and foreign populations are able to get along and mix perfectly well. The occasional ill feeling towards ‘guiris’ pales in comparison to racial bigotry and unjust hatred of other minorities such as gay, lesbian and other queer people.
All of us, whether gay or straight, whatever race or nationality we may be, regardless of our religious beliefs, can empathise to some extent with that feeling or being singled out and made to feel unwanted over something that, in many cases, we have no control over and wouldn’t want to change anyway because it is an integral part of who we are.
Thankfully, when it comes to the rights of and respect for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual, Intersex and Queer people in Murcia, there has been much progress made in the last two decades.
This June is Pride Month around the world, when communities come together to celebrate the newly won rights of a previously marginalised minority group who now have the freedom, in many parts of the world, to openly love whoever they wish without fear of legal or social recrimination.
Just after the end of Pride Month, on July 3, Spain marks 20 years of the right of people of the same sex to get married. On that date, the approval of a state law that modified the Civil Code made Spain only the third country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage after the Netherlands and Belgium.
It seems incredible to think of now, when same-sex marriage is legal in 38 countries around the world (England and Wales legalised it in 2013; Scotland in 2014; and Northern Ireland as recently as 2020). But 20 years ago, Spain was a trailblazer for equal treatment of the gay community as a minority deserving of right just like any other.
Since then, the Region of Murcia alone has celebrated a total of 1,856 equal marriages (889 between men and 967 between women), according to data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) compiled up to 2023. In the country as a whole, there have been around 75,000 same-sex marriages, according to the INE.
As José María García from the Association of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans Activists in Cartagena and Comarca (GALACTYCO) said, “The approval of the Law on Equal Marriage was a qualitative advance in terms of the acquisition of rights by the LGTBIQ+ community. It was a simple modification to the Civil Code that changed the lives of thousands of people. It was a law that made it possible to legalise families that had already been formed and to create new ones on equal terms with other non-gay people. It gave dignity and also contributed to give extra visibility to new family models and to achieve other long-standing demands of the LGTBIQ+ Community.”
LGBTIQ+ Pride events coming up in and around the Region this June and July include those in Alhama de Murcia, Los Alcázares and up in nearby Orihuela Costa, where expat community businesses such as TKO Radio are proud to support the Pride parade.
But there is still lots more work to be done to secure these hard-won freedoms and equality. Discriminatory sentiment continues to be rife among certain sectors of the populace, and there are ongoing attempts by far-right political parties to repeal equality laws in Murcia that protect the right to visibility of this collective in society.
“At present, there are still many challenges to overcome, but the most worrying and most urgent is to stop hate speech and violence towards LGTBIQ+ people,” say the representative of GALACTYCO. “We are witnessing an attempt to roll back the rights and freedoms that we thought we had conquered.”
That is why initiatives such as Spain’s dedicated helpline for victims of LGBTIphobia are so important and other measures that ensure the participation and representation in civil society of this minority group.
“It is very important to involve the entire LGTBIQ+ community and to involve the rest of society in our struggle, creating networks and synergies to eradicate the hatred that is becoming increasingly palpable,” concludes GALACTYCO’s García.
Image 1: Q77photo
Image 2: GALACTYCO
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