An analysis of the situation of the homosexual community during the years of Franco's regime, with previously unpublished archival documents.
How did gay people live during Franco's regime? What discourse did they have about their sexuality? Was homosexuality really condemned? Historian Geoffroy Huard tries to answer these questions based on numerous newspapers, books, testimonies, police and medical reports, archival documents from the “Vagos y Maleantes” and “Peligrosidad y Rehabilitación Social” courts (not studied since the return of democracy to Spain). Through a meticulous, rigorous, and documented reconstruction of the gay world in our country, Huard shows us, beyond common assumptions, how class justice was exercised against homosexuals—a repression mainly limited to the working classes when their lifestyle was linked to delinquency, vagrancy, or prostitution, while homosexuals from the middle and upper classes who could justify “honest” work and income were not condemned. It is these working-class lifestyles and this class justice that the author restores here.
