LGBT rights in the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

LGBT rights in the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic
Same-sex sexual activity legal? Illegal[1]
Penalty:
 Up to 3 years imprisonment[1]

LGBT rights in the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic face legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents.[1]

Law regarding same-sex sexual intercourse

Overseas Province of Spanish Sahara

In 1822, the Kingdom of Spain's first penal code was adopted and same-sex sexual intercourse was legalized. In 1928, under the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, the offense of "habitual homosexual acts" was recriminalized in Spain.[2] In 1932, same-sex sexual intercourse was again legalized in Spain.[2]

During the Spanish Civil War, the poet Federico García Lorca was executed by Nationalist forces allegedly for being gay, among other things, however this cannot be confirmed.[3] Legal reforms in 1944 and 1963 punished same-sex sexual intercourse under "scandalous public behavior." In 1954, the Vagrancy Law of 1933 was modified to declare that homosexuals are "a danger", equating it with proxenetism (procuring). The text of the law declares that the measures in it "are not proper punishments, but mere security measures, set with a doubly preventive end, with the purpose of collective guarantee and the aspiration of correcting those subjects fallen to the lowest levels of morality. This law is not intended to punish, but to correct and reform". However, the way the law was applied was clearly punitive and arbitrary: police would often use the Vagrancy laws against suspected political dissenters, using their homosexuality as a way to go around the judicial guarantees.[4][5]

However, in other cases the harassment of gays, lesbians and transgender people were clearly directed at their sexual mores, and homosexuals (mostly males) were sent to special prisons called "galerías de invertidos" ("galleries of deviants"). Thousands of homosexuals were jailed, put in camps or locked up in mental institutions under Franco's homophobic dictatorship, which lasted for 40 years until his death in 1975.[6] That year Franco's regime gave way to the current constitutional democracy, but in the early 70s gay prisoners were overlooked by political activism in favour of more "traditional" political dissenters. Some gay activists deplore the fact that reparations were not made until 2008.[7]

However, in the 1960s clandestine gay scenes began to emerge in Barcelona, an especially tolerant city under Franco's regime, and in the countercultural centers of Ibiza and Sitges (a town in the province of Barcelona, Catalonia, that remains a highly popular gay tourist destination). In the late 1960s and the 1970s a body of gay literature emerged in Catalan.[8] Attitudes in greater Spain began to change with the return to democracy after Franco's death through a cultural movement known as La movida. This movement, along with growth of the gay rights movement in the rest of Europe and the Western world was a large factor in making Spain today one of Europe's most socially tolerant places. In 1970, the Law of Social Hazard provided for a three-year prison sentence for those accused of same-sex sexual intercourse.[9]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 LGBT rights in Western Sahara
  2. 1 2 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community in Spain
  3. ↑ Spain
  4. ↑ Encyclopedia of Lesbian and Gay Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia. Gay
  5. ↑ "La junta de protección a la infancia de Barcelona: Aproximación histórica y guía de su archivo" (PDF). Retrieved 20 January 2011.
  6. ↑ Gays persecuted by Franco lose criminal status at last, The Guardian, Giles Tremlett, Madrid, 13 December 2001
  7. ↑ BOE. "Disposición Adicional Decimoctava de la Ley 2/2008, de 23 de diciembre, de Presupuestos Generales del Estado para el año 2009". BOE. Retrieved 2015-06-20.
  8. ↑ Josep-Anton Fernàndez: Another Country: Sexuality and National Identity in Catalan Gay Fiction, Volume 50./Modern Humanities Research Association: Texts and dissertations, p. 1., MHRA, 2000, ISBN 1902653262
  9. ↑ Gay Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia, Volume 2
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