Sexual dissidence in Spanish history

This event is supported by the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of Leeds, the Instituto Cervantes Leeds, the Institut Ramon Llull and the Centre for the History of Ibero-America at the University of Leeds, and will take place in Fairbairn House Suite A Rm 6 and 7 (G.06).

Symposium programme:

09.45-10.00: Arrival, coffee and introductory remarks

10.00-10.45: Marie Walin, The contribution of marriage annulment archives to the history of sexual dissidence

10.45-11.30: Álvaro González Montero, Queer ghosts: archaeology of a silence

11.30-11.45: Coffee break

11.45-12.30: Javier Fernández Galeano, End of the century scandals in Spain: the soundscapes of imprudence in the fall of empire

12.30-13.30: Lunch

13.30-14.15: Richard Cleminson, Homosexuality and the left in the 1930s

14.15-15.00: Geoffroy Huard, The LGBT memory of Franco's dictatorship

15.00-15.15: Tea

15.15-16.00: Daniel Gasol, The capitalisation of sexual dissidence for its disarticulation

Speakers and abstracts

Marie Walin (University of Poitiers)

Since the 12th century, sexual impotence has been a legitimate cause for requesting marriage nullity before the Diocesan Courts in the Catholic world. In my doctoral thesis, defended in December 2021, An analysis of the archives preserved in the historial collections of the dioceses of Madrid and Zaragoza corresponding to the 19th century. The 61 cases studied, analyse the evolution of medical practices and theories defining impotence.

Álvaro González Montero (University of Leeds)

The first part of this presentation proposes a Derridean look at the history of queer people in Spain during Franco's regime through the concept of the ghost or spectre. With a three-layered approach: theoretical, historical and literary, I discuss the ghostly quality of queerness and its connection to the liminal oblivion of queer identities in Spanish history.

Javier Fernández Galeano (University of Valencia)

This presentation foregrounds the soundscapes in which scandal disrupted national and imperial identities in the end of the century in Spain. Sound and scandal are multi-layered and can operate in opposing ways: as markers of Otherness or vehicles of self-modelling. Here I draw on methods from legal and cultural history to think about scandal in its various forms, from slut-shaming in colonial contexts to demands for autonomy.

Richard Cleminson (University of Leeds)

This article examines the discourses of the left, particularly anarchism, on the question of same-sex desire. It focuses on Spain, but attempts a transnational gaze by discussing examples from France and Portugal, among other countries. The article argues that one of the main problems facing historians in this regard is the question of evidence. Although texts on homosexuality within the labour movement can be found, attitudes "on the ground" are difficult to discern.

Geoffroy Huard (University of Cergy Paris)

The aim is to analyse the memory of the LGBT victims of Franco's dictatorship thanks to the judicial archives, in particular the collections of the special courts for vagrants and thugs and those for dangerousness and social rehabilitation between 1954 and 1980. I will highlight several points that break with LGBT historiography during Franco's dictatorship. This allows us to discover an LGBT memory beyond repression.

Daniel Gasol (independent researcher)

Currently, sexual dissidence understood as a system that rejects heteronormative mechanisms inherited from Judeo-Christian culture, such as marriage, the nuclear family or monogamy, seems to have been phagocytosed by a capitalist system with the aim of diversifying the consumer target.