Last year, we had reports on Gay Pride Parades from our special correspondents in Amsterdam and Berlin.This year, Madrid celebrated 40 years since holding the first pride parade in Spain in 1977, and it was in particularly extravagant style.

People with minority sexual orientations, and those suffering from gender dysphoria, that is to say, people from the LGBT community, gathered together in Madrid from all around the world to take part in World Pride Madrid 2017, sharing a single goal of aspiring towards a society in which LGBT people can live their lives as they want. Approximately 2 million people are estimated to have participated over the ten days of the event from the opening ceremony on June 23 to the closing ceremony on July 2, making it almost certainly the city’s biggest event this year. It even extended to the subway offering 24-hour service. The official site is http://www.worldpridemadrid2017.com/en/

The Madrid City authorities and the provincial government took an active role as public support organizations, and the Museo Nacional Del Prado also implemented new initiatives in cooperation with the Madrid Provincial Government. This included 30 works selected from the permanent exhibition, presented to visitors in four themes: Depictions of expressions of love from same-sex couples, artists who had suffered discrimination and oppression for their sexual orientation, the reality of having an appearance that contradicts one’s nature, and homosexuals in mythology. This will be open from June 10 to September 10.

The exhibition is titled “La Mirada del Otro” which can be translated as “The Other’s Gaze.”



Photograph 1. The lion on the pamphlet’s front cover is a work known as “El Cid” (1879) by the 19th-century French female artist Rosa Bonheur. So tomboyish as a child that she “was more like a boy than anyone,” Rosa lived a lifestyle that was unheard of for women of her era, having short hair, wearing pants, and smoking cigars. France’s highest honor, the Légion d’honneur, was also conferred upon her.

Looking at parts of the exhibition in the order of the themes…

〇Anmistad Inmortales – “Immortal Friends”

〇Perseguir los Deseos – “Pursuing Desire”

〇Engañosas Aperiencias – “Deceptive Appearances”

〇Amar Como los Dioses – “To Love Like the Gods”

It is fun to search for the works taking hints from the route map in the pamphlet, and you can view works in a comparatively quiet atmosphere removed from the bustle around the great masters. …just a little more that I want to add to the previous information regarding Prado.

As a side note, Madrid City Hall has changed the pedestrian traffic lights found at 72 intersections in town to distinct specifications.These will apparently stay as they are once the event has ended.