Lesbians in the Spanish democratic transition period (1975–1982) experienced an increase in civil rights compared to Francoist rule, including the 1978 repeal of a national law criminalizing homosexuality. Following the death of Francisco Franco in 1975, the societal attitude towards homosexuals was repressive. The transition brought forth changes but it was a slow process. Homosexuality was illegal under Franco's regime.Gema Pérez-Sánchez, Franco's Spain, Queer Nation?, 33 U. MICH. J. L. REFORM 359 (2000). Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjlr/vol33/iss3/7 During the transition, there was an initial sense of liberalization and greater freedom of expression. Societal attitudes towards homosexuality were ignored in the beginning portion of the transition, but there was no recognition of same-sex relations when it came to legal terms. It was not until the late 20th and 21st century that Spain saw significant progress in LGBTQ+ rights. Legal reforms and social movements gradually led to decriminalization of homosexuality, and later the recognition of same-sex marriage.
Background Lesbians came into this period after having been erased or ignored by the Franco regime.MÉNDEZ, R. P. Las diferentes construcciones y marcos interpretativos sobre los problemas de lesbianas y gays en España (1995–2005). Bagoas – Estudos gays: gêneros e sexualidades, v. 1, n. 01, 27 nov. 2012. Officially, lesbianism did not exist in Francoist Spain. Their history during this earlier period was largely not written and their cultural contributions during the Francoist period were not recognized. In some cases, histories of homosexuality in the earlier period and during this period do not include lesbians because they treat them as if lesbians did not exist as homosexuals and gay men were the only homosexuals. When homosexuality was thought of during the period, the only thing that came to mind were gay men. Women, including subgroups of women such as lesbians, came into the transition period as a marginalized group. They had been victims of police harassment during the Franco period. Globally in this period, lesbians found themselves feeling doubly displaced; they often found the gay and trans liberation movement deeply misogynistic and patriarchal, while at the same time feeling like the feminism was ignoring them and their needs as women. This situation led to the growth of lesbian feminism and lesbian separatist movements.
Mujeres Lesbianas written by Victoria Sau and later edited by Anabel Gonzales published in 1979 was the only domestic history of lesbianism written in the transition period.
Lesbian political and legal situation An independent history of lesbianism as a political movement in Spain had not begun until 1975, as lesbian voices had been intentionally silenced prior to this. This late emergence meant that lesbians had to independently define themselves both inside the established feminist movement, and the gay and transgender movement, at a time when the Spanish society as a whole and the movements were undergoing major stresses as a result of the death of Franco. Despite this, lesbianism as a political movement still maintained a low profile, with a limited voice as part of broader discussions. Politically, lesbians in the immediate post-Franco Spain were often nothing more than supporters of their more vocal and visible male counterparts because of greater past gay male visibility and continuing patriarchy. Some radical feminists in this period would choose lesbianism as a form of exerting control over their sexuality that had been repressed by the Franco regime. There were arguments at the time over the way to be both a feminist and a lesbian.Amman, Gretel (1979). "Como lesbiana contra la nueva moral feminista". Ponencia en las Jornadas Feministas de Granada, December 1979.Marchante Barrobes, Karmele. (1980) "Las relaciones entre mujeres y la bisexualidad como alternativas sexuales en el feminismo radical". Jornadas feministas de Barcelona, p. 10. The lesbian political movement at the time largely concluded that lesbian sexuality "did not have to be soft or aggressive, nor follow any feminist or feminine pattern."
The Women's Area of the Fundación Triángulo de Madrid has explained the invisibility of lesbians in this and other periods as, "A gay man has always been able to move to another place, seeking to live his identity in freedom. While a lesbian woman stayed near her house. There are always parents, brothers or children to take care of and those who do not disappoint ". Rocio Jimenez explained this further, saying, "And that's how lesbians have developed since invisibility, at the expense of that scarlet letter that a man has never had to deal with." According to Mexican feminist Gloria Careaga, feminism often "moves away from aspects such as sexuality and intimate life to focus on the social and the political." Rocío González of Fundación Triángulo said that feminists feared the "contagion of stigma" and disassociated themselves from lesbians.
Spanish lesbians in this period tend to be involved in party politics with Izquierda Unida (United Left) or PSOE. Lesbians were likely to be involved in these parties less because the parties supported lesbian rights, but more because they otherwise tended to align with their general political views. As time progressed, these parties tended to align more closely with lesbian political goals.
Lesbians first became active politically through the feminist movement and feminist collectives. This was largely because when they had attempted to join homosexual collectives, the specific needs of lesbians were often relegated to the sidelines as less important. There was no such barrier in the feminist movement. This alignment with feminist created the concept of "political lesbian" in Spain. One area which caused lesbians to be sidelined was the male homosexual focus on AIDS, which had a much smaller impact on the lesbian community. At the same time, later feminist and gay male focused research on this period ignored lesbian contributions to the feminist movement. The impact of this is research in this period on LGBTQ+ communities often is absent a gender perspective on the LGBTQ+ rights movement. Lesbian experiences disappear from both histories. Spanish lesbianism differs from lesbianism in the United States in that lesbians retain a unique political and social identity. In the United States, lesbianism as an identity has largely been subsumed by a broader LGBTQ+ movement that removed gender and sex classifications, which then used a larger group identity with its own economic power employed to support their causes.
Lesbians were at risk of imprisonment during this period because of their orientation. It was common that families of lesbians disapproved, and conversion therapy with the use of electroshock treatment was used on occasion. Some women died within a few years of being given electroshock treatment. This sort of conversion therapy and problems with family estrangement would continue on into the Spanish transition to democracy. For many lesbians, it was a tough choice of which was worse: prison, or mental institutions where this conversion therapy took place. In addition to the threat of conversion therapy, lesbians had to worry about other aspects of their family discovering their orientation. This included being disowned by their family or being assaulted by family members because of their orientation.
During the transition period that preceded the González government, culturally and politically there was a hold over from the Franco regime in terms of the legal status and cultural attitudes towards gays and lesbians from the Franco period. Lesbians and gays were still legally prosecuted by the government in this period. The police also continued persecution of lesbian, gay and transsexual individuals. Lesbians escaped the worst of this though, as much of the focus of persecution continued to be on gay men. This led many lesbians and gays to not want to be politically engaged with the transition process. One of the most important lesbian and gay political organizations in the transition period was the Movimiento Español de Liberación Homosexual (MELH).
Col·lectiu de Lesbianes de Barcelona issued a statement in 1978 that said of their need to organize as lesbians, "It is therefore necessary that our voice be heard to unveil and re-veil aspects of our reality as women and claim our difference as lesbians."
Tensions between gays and lesbians led to the creation in 1981 of the Colectivo de Feminsitas Lesbianas de Madrid (CFLM), and the Grupo de Acción por al Liberación Homosexual (GALHO), which was somewhat less radical than the Frente de Liberación Homosexual de Castilla (FLHOC).«De Pavlov a la lobotomía». Interviu. 5 de febrero de 2007. Consultado el 2 de marzo de 2014. This group was the first lesbian organization in Madrid. In 1979, the first Jornadas about lesbians took place. In 1983, the first Jornadas Lesbianas took place, focusing on lesbian sexuality. These came out of the First Encounter of Lesbian Feminists of Spain and the creation of the CFLM. The Jornadas of 1983 would mark the formal start of an organized lesbian political movement in Spain. Despite external tensions, politically active lesbians faced fewer issues around internal dissent about ideology than their male counterparts. Shared experiences during the Franco regime acted as a social and political glue that bound them together strongly. They often found themselves politically situated among radical feminists of the period. Politically, lesbians and their gay male counterparts would continue to be separate through the final part of the transition period in 1985 and remain separated until the early 1990s when marriage equality became a goal of many in the broader LG movement.Unlike in some other countries, the concept of civil partnerships was never widely discussed in Spain as an alternative to marriage. This was in part because LG activists were insistent from the onset of the conversation that they demanded full equality under the law. While Partido Popular briefly considered the concept in 1997 and 2002, the LGB activists's political partner of PSOE understood the community was willing to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve full legal marriage equality. The LGB community's desire for full marriage equality was in part a response to what the realization of lesser legal partnerships under Partido Popular would actually mean and how they would be implemented. They feared that legally it could actually mean merely cohabitation.
Movimiento español de liberación homosexual (MELH – Spanish Homosexual Liberation Movement) Agrupación Homófila para la Igualdad Sexual (AGHOIS), later renamed Movimiento Español de Liberación Homosexual (MELH) in 1975, was created in 1910 as a liberation movement for homosexuals. The MELH was one of the pioneering LGBTQ+ rights organizations in Spain during the late 1970s. They were there for the immediate aftermath of Francisco Franco's dictatorship.The purpose of the group was to influence the Church, arts, medicine, law, sociology and the press to change their stereotypical views about homosexuality and combat negative indoctrination which said homosexuality was evil. The Barcelona based group kept meetings to eight people or fewer in order to avoid attracting attention from the government. They felt compelled to start organizing in response to the 1970 Ley de peligrosidad y rehabilitación social. Their work dismayed other members of the LGBTQ+ community as they believed it entailed too much risk without any substantial reward. They started publishing an eponymous newsletter of the same name in 1972.