It’s so easy to think after attending well on forty Prides that you know it all. That there’ll be a huge rainbow flag carried by thirty people: tick; A somewhat circuitous route that winds through side streets: tick; it’ll end up with a rally with disco hits you’ve heard far too many times: tick and (nowadays) there’ll be heavily sponsored floats that gratuitously overdo the self promo: tick.
Yet this was not the rally of the previous Tuesday, that I rather ungraciously bemoaned yesterday. This was the real deal. A ‘proper’ Pride march that I’d only learnt about hours before, as my friend Bea happened to catch it in an instagram post she had chanced upon. So firstly I owe an apology to Almerians, in that I’d thought the rally on Tuesday was it it. Wrong. So very wrong. This ‘manifestacion’ as they like to call such things here, was the real deal offering all the above and more.
The international press were full on about the huge Pride Rally in London yesterday, celebrating fifty years since the first was organised there in 1972. The old activists were wheeled out (no, I’m being both unkind and ableist: they are a pretty sprightly bunch actually), to talk about how it felt going on the first GLF (Gay Liberation Front) march all those years ago. The various internal arguments surfaced as ever (should the still quite homophobic police be allowed to march in uniform, the compromise- they marched with no uniforms and the Queer activist group, Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants, were allowed to halt the parade to protest against the presence of police at future London pride events) and Labour party leader Keir Starmer was able to march with a glittery face and a t-shirt that said ‘We make Camden Proud’. Well let’s hope so Sir Keir, yes. It too went on a circuitous route around London town for four hours, ending in a staged rally in Trafalgar Square with speeches from the great and good and performers from current pop worthies like Ava Max.
Reliable estimates suggested a million people had in some way been actively involved in it. Now that’s one big parade. Our little manifestacion was called Fiesta Diversidad (Party of Diversity) and featured ten white drag acts on the flier (I may be being a little unfair here as I’m not entirely sure of the chosen gender pronouns of them all..)
Reliable estimates suggested a million people had in some way been actively involved in .. the London march… Now that’s one big parade.
And yet, walking behind the two floats and around ten sponsored open top BMW minis (local recently wed lesbian and gay couples sat in them waving and looking a tad self conscious, since you ask) somehow I felt part of it in a much more intimate way than I guessed I would have in London and realised pretty soon I was going to have to eat humble pie on here. So our little group of seven sashayed our way down on the route from Puerta Purchena in the very centre of Almeria and through a few obligatory sidestreets as well to the Almadrabillas Park on the Paseo Maritimo. Though Bea, with freedom flags painted on her face too this time, said she quite liked the sidestreets ‘as we can get to show the locals eating tapas in bars a thing or too’. And she wasn’t wrong.
The local drumming band leading us kept up a fierce drumming all the time, the minis behind tooted their horns incessantly (engendering slight shadows of the right wing Vox party marches in my mind) and I yet again resisted the urge to toot my whistle (‘Whistles are for football matches here’ I was told). My friend Joe had seen the parade twice before whilst visiting in 2018 and 2019, before Covid put a lid on things in the following years and he said ‘I think its actually bigger than then but those floats look suspiciously like the ones I saw in 2018’. It’s true: I have noticed they do recycle in a big way here; the thinking goes ‘why ditch something that worked well about five years ago’? The christian floats in the Semana Santa (Easter) Procession have been carried around the city routes for literally decades and decades, though not by the same men, they are damned heavy to do a circuit on. Men can be seen at Ego (our local gym) in training for the event for months in advance. Or so I like to think.
So yes, these floats were relatively lightweight affairs, the crowd weren’t chanting much and there were clearly lots of friends here too offering support but here were the LGTBI (as the flyer had it) crowd in Almeria, finally, after two years wait, out to parade and party on down. And it did feel good to be a real part of it. In a flock of a million you are but a feather, in this crowd we were an important, organic part of its structure, as it picked its way through the Almerian calles and pasajes, with it’s various multicoloured freedom flags, (some old school, some new), flying out and away in front of it.
All about .. the queer revolution in the Middle East and how ‘one good song can do more than 5000 protests’.
‘Beirut Dreams in Colour’
When we arrived at the parque there was a small stage and a surprisingly large number of portaloos (budget blown anyone or maybe that was the freebie from the council?) and the rainbow flags were laid out in front of the stage as we all skipped to get our photo taken in front of them. Yes, the first song the DJ played was a tired cliche, ‘Its Raining Men‘ (or ‘Its Raining Men for the 101st time‘ as I think of it) and seemed a slightly ‘non diverse’ opener to me but as the drag queens came out, one by one, to perform Spanish favourites, interspersed with a few more club hits the crowd seemed relatively relaxed about it all. It was what I’ve come to realise, a very Spanish affair. As indeed it should be.
And that music was important especially here in this Southern Med city. If you want to appreciate quite how much so, there’s a sobering BBC documentary online ‘Beirut Dreams in Colour‘ (see Beirut Dreams in Colour) about the queer revolution in the Middle East and how ‘one good song can do more than 5000 protests’. It tells the story of how Mashrou’ Leila were one of the biggest bands in the Middle East, their lead singer, Hamed, being the most prominent openly gay rock star in the Arab world. However, an event at a concert in Cairo in 2017 changed all that. Whilst playing to 35,000 people, the band looking out at the many swaying flickering lights saw it happened to include an Egyptian fan flying the infamous rainbow flag. It was a simple act but (perhaps incredibly to us) it would be later described by Egyptian authorities as ‘inciting debauchery’, and ultimately that simple act catapulted the band, the fan and others into an important (but also tragic) series of events. The flag representing the fight for freedom: freedom to choose and live out your own sexuality, a fight that is so very far from over. Using sensitive music and waving flags still represents that ongoing fight.
So the carrying and laying down of these flags at the Parque both here and many other places really does represent something very profound, such a simple gesture and yet so very full of meaning, of strength, of solidarity. And I humbly submit my apology for the tirade in part one; and with a request for a tad more publicity next time to the great and good who arranged it all I concur: Almeria, you do know how to throw a fiesta. A powerfully important fiesta. Not that I ever really doubted it. Muchas gracias por la invitacion.
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