Green Thursday, radio program, February 6, 1975, source recording
- UNNAMED SPANISH DELEGATE: I'll go into detail about
- the position of gays in Spain vis-à-vis the law,
- I should like to give you a quick picture based
- on the current political situation of the Spanish
- people, in general.
- As in order to understand fully the position
- of one section of society, it is essential to know
- what is happening in society as a whole.
- For example, in Holland and other countries
- there is tolerance toward gays.
- This is because the historical process,
- both political and cultural, has made it possible.
- The existence of local gay associations
- can only be understandable in relation
- to a given political structure.
- In Spain, after the 1936-1939 Civil War,
- there was a dictatorship of church and army determined
- to copy the pattern that existed in Germany and Italy.
- Namely to give entire support in the interests of the big land
- owners and the growing class of financiers.
- The church would supply the ideological tenets,
- while the army would provide the force.
- And (unintelligible) the middle class, the human element.
- Thus started a particularly severe period of depression,
- which lasted until the early 1950s.
- In the (unintelligible) this known period
- can be summed up in the words of a member of the National
- Council: "The only reasoning I know of is fists and firearms."
- The beginning of the Cold War marked a change
- in Spain's fortunes.
- The United States saw in Franco's anti-communist regime
- an excellent ally.
- And Spain's economic isolation, which
- had followed the defeat of the Nazi and fascist dictatorships,
- was relieved.
- As a result, there was rapid economic growth
- and a big increase in the cost of living,
- which provoked the 1959 labor troubles, such as the miners'
- strikes in Asturias, rapidly put down by the government.
- But there was no change in their ideological setup
- of the country.
- No dissenting voice succeeded in breaching the repressive walls
- of the system.
- The Spanish bourgeoisie found a possible way out
- of the crisis in tourism.
- In order to attract foreign tourists to our then recently
- discovered holiday spots, Falangist symbols,
- such as the outstretched arm, were banished,
- and words, if they were reminiscent of those partly
- responsible for the Second World War,
- were deleted from official jargon.
- But in reality, everything remained just as before.
- Social and political repression went on
- under cover of the slogan, "Spain is different."
- What?
- (cough)
- (metal clanging)
- Does this hint at today the political machinery
- of the Spanish regime, which continues faithful to expansion
- as guardian of the bourgeoisie first,
- is up against ever-growing difficulties.
- Accentuated by the general recession that depletes
- the whole radicalist world.
- When faced with this situation, and following the assassination
- of the president of the governments, Luis Carrero
- Blanco, an apparent process of criminalization
- was initiated with the ostensible object
- of securing quite the popular support for the regime.
- And ensuring its continuance after the difficult General
- Franco.
- However, this stage this stage, known as the apertura,
- or opening up, comes up against the resistance of the regime's
- most conservative elements, as well as
- the skepticism of the Spanish people
- who realize that behind all the fine words,
- there still lies the repressive machine with legislation
- to match.
- This is taken from the government's attitude
- towards the counter labor conflicts, which
- are every day more frequent.
- To conclude the survey of the Spanish political scene today,
- we can say that the system is a dictatorship in which
- a dominant class imposes its own ideas in respect to marriage,
- the family, love, and sex.
- Adjusted to the rigor of an ecclesiastical and pedagogical,
- which even the Church herself has begun to abandon.
- The establishment tries to hide its true nature
- under cloak of (unintelligible) for commerical consumption,
- which has no effect whatever on the harshness
- of an official morality, born of oppression and exploitation.
- The Spanish people are, therefore,
- submerged in a condition of neuroses
- and sexual frustration, which is difficult to change
- after lasting for thirty-five years.
- Turning now to the legal aspect of gays in Spain
- have been persecuted like those in other European countries.
- Ever since the rise in power, the Christians in the Imperial
- Rome, they were treated as sinners and criminals.
- Nevertheless, from the (unintelligible)
- of the first penal code in Spain in 1822, all reference to gays
- disappeared from Spanish penal laws, except for military ones.
- And this attitude was maintained in later reforms of the code,
- in 1848, 1860, and 1870.
- It was not until 1928, during the dictatorship
- of General Primo de Rivera that homosexuality reappeared
- in the law as a punishable offense, defined
- as, "The committing lewd acts with person of the same sex."
- With the coming of the Second Republic,
- the penal code was, again reformed again reformed.
- And no mention of the offense of this was dropped.
- In some secret reforms in 1944 and 1963, after the Civil War,
- gayness was still explicitly mentioned,
- but continued to exist as an offense under such description
- as indecent abuses, corruption of minors,
- and scandalous conduct.
- Incidentally, a minor in this connection
- can, in Spain, be any person after twenty-three years
- of age, although legal maturity is
- reached at the age of eighteen.
- It is a scandalous standard that the homosexual acts
- are punished even if they are carried out
- between consenting adults.
- The official attitude towards gayness
- is no way better expressed than in the language of the courts.
- For example, the judgment of the Supreme Court,
- we find such expressions of sexual perversion,
- abnormal conduct, shameful occurrence,
- inversion of the natural order, et cetera.
- This alone demonstrates how little Spanish judge
- are acquainted with scientific sexual thought.
- But it is not nearly scientific ignorance.
- Such expressions as disgusting vice, law against nature,
- moral contagion, highly immoral conduct,
- lustful deviation, deviating practices against nature,
- et cetera, reminds us more of a bishop's sermon
- than of an eight court judge.
- As if the preceding sentence were not evidence enough,
- we find the following words in an actual judgment:
- "Nefarious of the mythical trade like an angel
- from the medieval past."
- The ideological question of the political system,
- which is clearly discernible from the expression cited,
- becomes more and more obvious as a mixture of constant reaction
- and cynicism when in Supreme Court judgment of 1969,
- for example, gayness is defined as an obscene practice,
- particulaly created by our culture,
- which is more tolerant than open and respectful relations
- between opposite sexes.
- Gayness is described as a repugnant affair, which
- is revolting to every honest conscience, offense
- against decency, and good conduct.
- What is really surprising is that in using such expressions,
- all that Spanish judges succeed in doing
- to gays, who desire to live as a human beings,
- is to show them what they must do,
- namely subvert the family and the moral and social law order.
- In other words, change society.
- But the Spanish legislation also identifies itself
- with the political system, when it includes gays, clearly
- and explicitly in the law which has served as the regime's
- principal repressive instrument that is the 1933
- Law of Vagrants and Rogues.
- This law, when reformed in 1954, lays down
- that gays, by the mere fact of being so,
- can be declared dangerous and subject to security measures.
- The law was repealed in 1970 and substituted
- by the present law relating to the socially
- dangerous and destructive rehabilitation.
- Ley de Peligrosidad y Rehabilitación Social,
- drawn up by Judge Antonio Sabater Thomás,
- who had always distinguished himself by his implacable
- severity as implicated in his speeches, articles,
- and judicial actions against all who were outside the social
- path, especially gays who, according to him,
- constitute an international mafia.
- (laughter)
- This alone, which Judge Sabater Thomás (unintelligible) which
- was presented to the Cortez's Spanish Parliament,
- all gays over sixteen were declared socially dangerous,
- simply because of their being gays.
- Just as they were before.
- With this, some members of the chamber
- did not agree, as they considered the wording far
- too sweeping and exaggerated.
- In the end, a law was passed in a less radical form leaving it
- to the courts to rule that not all gays be declared socially
- dangerous, but only those individuals who
- were proved to commit homosexual acts
- and in whom there would become a danger to society.
- Although, for all practical purposes,
- it came to the same thing, it could help a defending lawyer
- to do some legal hair splitting for the direct benefit
- of the gays.
- The sanctions which the law applies
- to gays who are declared a danger to society,
- range from prohibiting them from living in certain areas
- or visiting certain public places
- and submitting them to judicial control for five years.
- Or they can be confined in re-educational centers
- for up to three years.
- At present, they would be interned in the Center
- for Re-education of Male Homosexuals in Huelva,
- Andalucia.
- They are not subjected to any aversion therapy, as we feared.
- But that, after the police have dealt with them
- before and after sentence, their re-education
- is going to be achieved as a fine example
- of the illogicality of the system to work.
- Such as the making of (unintelligible) tires, ropes
- for the Navy, footballs, et cetera.
- Like the internees in the Auschwitz concentration camp
- they are told, work will make you free.
- And of course in Catholic Spain they
- are treated to sermons like this preaching salvation
- through the gospel message.
- All this leads to distressing situations
- amongst those interned in the re-educational center,
- upsetting their emotional stability,
- even leading to attempt suicide.
- Once the judge in charge of the case
- receives a report that the re-education process has
- been accomplished, he can order the internee to be released,
- reserving the right to exile him from his usual place
- of residence.
- However, even the limited capacity
- of the Huelva Center for a country
- with thirty-four million inhabitants,
- the majority of those convicted by the courts
- are simply shut out in the ordinary jails,
- like any other member.
- From what we have said, both on the legal situation
- of the gays in Spain, as well as on the historical political
- break down, it can be seen that the Spanish gays is up
- against a pitiless reality of persecution and discrimination.
- He has absolutely no possibility of defense
- and must submit to uncontrolled police action, which
- is not accustomed to meeting with any hindrance
- to brutality.
- But it is not.
- Only the gay is the victim of this blind force charged
- with watching over the order and peace of the Spanish people.
- But those who oppose the continuance
- of a political system inherited from Hitler, Mussolini,
- Sabater, and the (unintelligible)
- are also its victims.
- We therefore maintain here that the claims of gays in Spain
- should be integrated with those of the Spanish people
- as a whole, so that they have rights as men and citizens
- should be recognized.
- The political transformation of Spain
- is the only hope for Spanish gays.
- (applause)
- (end of recording)