For forty years under Franco’s dictatorship, Spain lived under repression in which the gay community — in a time before the term LGBTQ+ had yet been coined — was persecuted and imprisoned for the mere act of existing. On 26 June 1977, only two years after the regime’s end, Barcelona witnessed its first public demonstration for sexual freedom — a courageous act organized by the Front d’Alliberament Gai de Catalunya (Gay Liberation Front of Catalonia).

Nearly five decades later, Pride BCN 2024 stands as a testament to that hard-won freedom — a celebration that turns the streets once marked by fear into a living stage of pride and joie de vivre.