Magazine Article	Articles Archive

I spoke with Pau Vendrell, the handsome young editor of the gay monthly Full Lambda, and a leader in Valencia's Lambda gay association (Lambdavalencia.org). Both the magazine and the association's official gay map of Valencia are only in the Valencian dialect -- a bit of a challenge for the non-Valencian visitor, and even for Castilian Spaniards.

Pau studies visual communications at the University of Valencia, and is a staunch Valencian nationalist who has been politically engaged since his early adolescence. Pau, and Lambda, are politically on the far left. Indeed, Valencia's activist gay community is placed solidly within the wide range of anarchist, communist and green activism -- with strong gay and lesbian support for abortion rights, drug legalization, and workers' rights. It feels like the gay world in North America circa 1976, when the watchword was gay liberation, by contrast to today's pale GLBT groups rallying for gay marriage, but avoiding a wider political vision.

View our poll archive

Lambda has taken strong stands against participation in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the group marches regularly in Valencia's huge May Day celebration. Spain's governing PSOE (Socialist Workers Party) fully legalized gay marriage, and also resisted attempts by the Right (joined by some feminists) to raise the age of consent to 16 (the amazing compromise in the Cortes, or parliament, was to raise it from 12 to the current 13!).

The federal government also now subsidizes gay groups throughout Spain, both participating in and underwriting the large gay pride events each summer. Valencia itself has a PP (People's Party) city government -- quite reactionary. One bizarre result is that the local conservative mayor created a shill gay and lesbian group and its own AIDS education effort to get federal Spanish funding. It took some political acumen, but Pau and his group were able to get back some of this money for their own work.

Pau and his partner, like many gay men and lesbians in Spain, took advantage almost immediately of the gay marriage statute. Pau was married in his lover's quite conservative hometown, the village of Sagunt. Following the nuptials there was a huge reception, to which both families came in large numbers.