Lesbians during the government of José María Aznar

Lesbians during the conservative government of José María Aznar in Spain (1996 - 2004), experienced and participated in a variety of political and cultural happenings.

Legal and political situation for lesbians
Lesbian couples have internalized the deep-seated Spanish ideas of National Catholicism that place an important on family. This has played a role in their activism around adoption rights.

PSOE lost the general elections in 1996 after having been in office for fourteen years. They were replaced by the conservative Partido Popular. This transition marked an important moment in Spanish LG history as it marked the start of a period where homosexuality became very much an important political issue inside Spanish politics.

During the Partido Popular era, PSOE would frequently bring up LG rights when they thought it would activate their voting base by making the issue into a political weapon to attack Partido Popular.

During this period, the influence of smaller, loosely organized LGTB rights organizations in Barcelona began to fade on a national level and were replaced by national organizations based in Madrid.

Starting in 1997, political activism began to occur within the lesbian and gay rights movement to effect change on the regional level.

The 1999 Basque Country Gender Equality plan was pioneering in its inclusion of lesbians.

The 2003 Canary Islands Gender Equality plan was pioneering in its inclusion of lesbians.

The 2005 Catalan Gender Equality plan was pioneering in its inclusion of lesbians.

The Spanish government would sometimes come into conflict with the European Union over women's rights issues as they related to lesbians and other sexual minorities in bodies like European Institute of Women's Health and European Institute for Gender Equality.

Lesbians often benefited from broadening of women's rights.

Spanish lesbians in this period tend to be involved in party politics with Izquierda Unida (IU) or PSOE. Lesbians were likely to be involved in these parties less because the parties supported lesbian rights, but more because they otherwise tended to align with their general political views. As time progressed, these parties tended to align more closely with lesbian political goals.

Starting around 2001, the lesbian community pushed for anti-discrimination laws, hate crime legislation and laws to protect lesbians from domestic violence.

Lesbian rights in this period were often defined by policy makers around family, as Spanish citizenship has traditionally placed a huge value on this. This included a focus on marriage and parenting.

Marriage equality and adoption
From 1993 to 2002, the public discourse around recognition of same-sex couples was that of recognizing de facto couples. From 2002 to 2005, the lesbian and gay political agenda was focused around marriage equality.

Starting in 2001, lesbians and other in homosexual rights movement in both Spain and Portugal began a campaign for same-sex marriage and adopt rights. This was their second major political push after the decrimalization of homosexuality, which occurred in Spain in 1978.

Starting in 1995, in broader society, there were many ways people discussed the desire for same-sex couples to be recognized including using the phrases “uniones  de  hecho”, “parejas de hecho” and “matrimonio gay”.

Efforts in 1997 and 1998 in Catalonia would seek the regional government recognize civil unions. They successfully got a couples registry in Catalonia in 1998. They were the sixth place in the world to do this, behind Denmark in 1989, Norway in 1993, Sweden in 1995, Iceland and Hungary in 1996 and the Netherlands in 1998.

A survey in 1997 found that 57.4% of Spaniards favored same-sex couples having the same rights and obligations as married couples, with 84.6% supporting the marriage equality. In 1998, COGAM began advocating for same-sex marriage and same-sex couple adoption.

De facto relationships of same-sex couples were allowed to be registered in Aragon starting in 1999, in Navarra  in 2000 and in Valencia in 2001. De facto relationship registries were not enough for lesbian and gay couples because these did not allow them to adopt; the law only allowed married couples to be able to adopt or to assume guardianship of children. In 2000, Navarre became the first region to allow lesbians and gays to adopt. The law passed despite opposition from Navarrese People's Union (UPN). COGAM spokesperson Beatriz Gimeno said of the passage of the law, "It is a great step forward because it breaks with the last social taboo that exists towards homosexuals."

In September 2000, the  broad parliamentary discussions around lesbians and gays assumed they were a special subject, for whom the law which should create special policies. No party at the time was discussed same-sex marriage. The discussion was recognition of civil unions as part of "gay policies" by the leftist parties.

In granting recognition to de facto same-sex couples in Navarre in 2000, the law also allowed registered couples to be eligible to adopt children. Partido Popular challenged the legality of this, taking their efforts to the Constitutional Court. Navarre succeeded in defending their law. The success of their defense resulted in Asturias putting in similar adoption rights in their 2002 legislation. They were quickly followed by the Basque Country in early 2003. By 2003, all other autonomous communities considering de facto same-sex relationship registries all included adoption rights as part of such legislation.

In 2001, a lesbian couple in Barcelona went to a notary to try to record the rights of the non-biological mother of the couple's child. After their efforts were shared with Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC), the spokesperson for PSC called for same-sex marriage to become law to prevent the need for such situations happening in the future.

2004 represented a shift with some left-wing parties having electoral programs supporting same-sex marriage. This narrow solution was viewed as providing a broad spectrum solution to discrimination faced by lesbians and gays in Spain. The Catholic Church and Partido Popular argued that lesbians and gays are unequal citizens, existing in a special other category of citizenship. As such, these conservative groups argued that lesbians and gays should not be afforded the rights afforded to equal, non-othered citizens. This allowed them also to oppose adoption by same-sex couples.

By late 2004, 12 of Spain's 19 regions had passed some form of a civil union law.

Reproductive rights
The 1988  Spanish Law on Assisted Reproduction was modified in November 2003, with the purpose of clarifying what happened to unclaimed surplus frozen embryo and to avoid the creation of more  unclaimed surplus frozen embryo. Prior to the passage of this law, frozen embryos could either be donated for use by other couples, donated for research purposes or destroyed. After this modification, frozen embryos could only be used for reproductive purposes with the exception of frozen embryos created before November 2003, which could continue to be used for research purposes. A modification, done by Royal Decree, also limited the number of eggs to be extracted and fertilized to three. Despite this and because it was done only via Royal Decree, infertility clinics continued to collect more than three fertilized embryos.

The Law of Assisted Reproduction Techniques (45/2003, November 21) did not allow lesbian spouses to donate eggs to one another, only allowing lesbian couples to accept anonymous egg donations. Heterosexual couples were allowed to have the man donate his sperm for use in IVF procedures. This created a situation where lesbian couples had de facto fewer rights under the law than heterosexual couples despite stated desires for equality for everyone under the law.

Pension rights
A lesbian couple from Andalusia became involved in 1984. They did everything they could since they were involved to legally bind themselves to each other. This included having joint checking accounts, listing both their names on a vehicle they owned and making sure they were listed as cohabitants. They registered as a de facto couple in 2000, as marriage and civil unions were not yet legally available. In 2002, one member of the couple died and in December of that year, she filed a claim with Spanish Social Security to try to collect a widow's pension. The claim was denied as the state did not recognize her as being legally married. The rejection kick started a long legal process. The woman claimed she was discriminated against because of her orientation at the High Court of Justice of Andalusia, but they rejected the claim. She appealed to the Constitutional Court in February 2005. Her appeal was suspended in 2008 pending the result of a similar case. In June 2014, the Constitutional Court finally dismissed her appeal and denied her the right to a pension.

Immigration rights
At the Jornada "Right to asylum and persecution on the grounds of gender" on 2 December 2004 organized by the Basque Institute for Women, the topic of being a lesbian or gay man is brought up as a reason people can request asylum in Spain because, in other countries, being a homosexual can lead to social and political persecution.

European lesbian political and legal status
The 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam incorporated European Union guidance around sexual orientation and discrimination to say such discrimination must be abolished. The treaty defined orientation as affective and sexual desire between two people of the same sex, opposite sex, or indistinctly with people of different sexes. The Treaty of Amsterdam said orientation can be both a choice, similar to that of religion, or a precondition, similar to that of race. No matter the reason a person is attracted to someone based on their sex, the European Union said people's sexual orientation must be vigorously protected; a choice to be lesbian or gay cannot factor into discriminatory efforts. The Treaty of Amsterdam was ratified in May 1999 by 15 member states. It marked an important end to legislative efforts inside the European Commission that began in 1979.

Culture
In the 1990s, police files from the dictatorship and the transition period began to open up and become available to researchers. This allowed for the first time for researchers to gain access to valuable materials to begin to write histories of the lesbian community in Spain.

Spain is made up of multiple subcultures including Catalan, Basque and Castilian. These subcultures lead to a situation where Spanish lesbian culture is not unified.

The first ethnographic history of Spanish lesbians was published in 1999 by Olga Viñuales and focused on lesbians in Catalonia. Her work was pioneering in its day.

Lesbians, as a group and a culture, continued to be largely ignored by Spanish society compared to gay men. They remained rather invisible. Knowledge about lesbians from this period does not come from the same sources about Spanish gay men of the period.

The Women's Area of the Fundación Triángulo de Madrid has explained the invisibility of lesbians in this and other periods as, "A gay man has always been able to move to another place, seeking to live his identity in freedom. While a lesbian woman stayed near her house. There are always parents, brothers or children to take care of and those who do not disappoint". Rocio Jimenez explained this further, saying, "And that's how lesbians have developed since invisibility, at the expense of that scarlet letter that a man has never had to deal with." According to Mexican feminist Gloria Careaga, feminism often  "moves away from aspects such as sexuality and intimate life to focus on the social and the political." Rocío González of Fundación Triángulo said that feminists feared the "contagion of stigma" and disassociated themselves from lesbians.

Lesbians in this period were often in feminist spaces.

One of the reasons that lesbians continued to be invisible in this period is that they are less easily recognizable than gay men as they are generally first identified as women.

As the LGBT community began to be perceived as a collective market to sell products and services to in the latter part of this period, lesbians and working class members of the LGBT community more generally were often not included as part of these efforts, leaving lesbians out of the neoliberalist attitudes of these companies towards the broader LGBT community.

Gema Hassen-Bey won a bronze medal at the 1996 Summer Paralympics. Born in 1967 in Las Rozas de Madrid, she would not come out of the closet until the 2010s.

There was a generational gap in the lesbian culture that existed in cities like Vitoria until around 2000 and 2001. This was because following the end of the dictatorship, it had been increasingly easier for young lesbians to identify as such and to feel they had rights. They did not need to fight for these things as they already existed. This could make older lesbians feel disconnected from younger lesbians as they did not have the same shared experience.

Lesbians in the mid-2000s continued to face double discrimination because of their gender and because of their sexual orientation. This impacted their lives, with economic consequences that made it hard for many lesbians to come out of the closet. lesbophobia was a problem.

Women had received electroshock therapy in the last days of Franco continued to suffer the consequences of this conversion therapy in this period.

In 2000, Basque writer Lucia Etxebarria became involved in a controversy after she asked all women who were of non-normative sexualities to identify as "no-heterosexual" in line with Anglo-Saxon queer theory. This occurred at a time when discussing women's sexuality was still not generally acceptable in Basque culture and when a lesbian history of the region had yet to be written.

Relationships
Women in relationships with other women in this period did not always refer to themselves as lesbians.

Parenting
As lesbians began to demand access to motherhood, some Spanish feminists became concerned that lesbians were serving to reinforce problematic sex roles in their efforts to seek equal rights.

Pride (Orgullo)
In 1999, 30,000 people attended Madrid Pride.

By 2000, Madrid Pride had become much less political, becoming a gay-friendly neoliberalist type event known as "euro rosa." This change in the reason for Pride, its focus and its heavy commercialization also coincided with the beginnings of a new rift in the European and Spanish LGBT communities.

The number of lesbians involved in organizing and being visible in Spanish pride events declined in this period; those involved often had lower level positions.

Pride continued to be written in the masculine and to be primarily run by gay men in this period.

Language
In the 2001 edition of Diccionario de la lengua española, tortlero is for the first time defined as being a derogatory term, instead of just defining it lesbiana. It is also the first time that tortlero is indicated as a word used to describe lesbians and not just, as it had been exclusively defined since 1927, one who makes tortillas. bollera first appeared in the Diccionario de la lengua española in 1989. It is defined as a word used to describe lesbians. It would not be until 2001 where the vulgar nature of the word is added to the definitions.

Discrimination
In this period, queer was used as a word to insult or discriminate against lesbians.

Masculine women in this period were often accused of being lesbians because of their subversion of traditional Spanish gender norms. This existed despite the fact that not all Spanish lesbians are masculine, nor were all masculine women lesbians.

During the 1990s in Spain, lesbians often experiences verbal and physical abuse;  employers, schools and universities often had unclear harassment policies specifically as it related to rights of lesbians, making it harder for lesbians to act against abuses in institutional settings.

Organizations
In 2000, Federación Estatal de Gays y Lesbianas renamed itself to Federación Estatal de Lesbianas y Gays (FELG). This represented a change in leadership in the organization, from gay men to lesbian women. Their goals became more about advancing marriage equality and more social acceptance. In 2002, FELG held their second congress and changed their name to Federación Estatal de Lesbianas,Gays y Transexuales at their second congress. In 2002, the Lesbian Policy Area of FELGTB began to take off under the leadership of Desirée Chacón. She had previously chaired the Lesbian Group in COGAM and continued to chair it until 2004.

By 2000, political parties had become heavily involved with lesbian, gay and transgender organizations; the PSOE government's willingness to provide subsidies to support these organizations had left some like Asociación de Empresas y Profesionales para Gays y Lesbianas de Madrid y su Comunidad (Aegal), Mado,  Federación Española de Lesbianas, Gays, Transexuales y Bisexuales (Felgtb) and COGAM dependent on these funds for their continued existence. Some prominent lesbians including Mili Hernández were highly critical of these relationships and the subsequent transformation of lesbian and rights militancy.

Feminism
Lesbian activists in this period were largely invisible, with years of hard work receiving hardly any credit. The lesbian response to desexualization and invisibilization by feminists more generally in this period was multifaceted. For some, this status vindicated the needs of their activism and the creation of their lesbian groups and associations. For other lesbians, they felt bored or angry, and these attitudes turned them away from the broader feminist group to focus on more lesbian related social, artistic and political activities. The actors in the LGBT movement and the feminist movement generally had two approaches to lesbians speaking out against being sexualized and erased; they either pretended not to know this was happening or they got really angry at these lesbians. Queer activists were angry at times because they saw lesbian desire for visibility and recognition as challenging what they saw were more important issues, like transrights, the AIDS epidemic and homophobia.

During the 1990s, state elements began to use gender perspective more when addressing the needs of women and lesbians. Some groups of feminists and lesbians opposed this approach as they saw it as a return to Francoist policies of making both groups victims who needed protection and needed the state to determine the direction and goals of both lesbians and feminists.

During the 1990s, lesbian identification with queer politics or queer feminism is viewed by lesbian feminists as a rejection of a lesbian identity and supporting a community that rejects the very existence of a lesbian identity that supports making lesbians invisible. Transfeminism in the 1990s was often called queer bollero feminisms.

Starting in 1994 and lasting until June 1998, the Basque and Spanish language lesbian feminist magazine Sorginak ceased publication. It was relaunched in 1998, and from 1999 onward it was published exclusively by Colectivo de Lesbianas Feministas de Bizkaia.

At the end of the 1990s, Ángeles Álvarez joined the Federation Commission in the Violence Commission of the Council of Women of the Community of Madrid and participated in the creation of the Madrid Forum against Gender Violence, which in the year 2001 will be the State Network of Feminist Organizations against Gender Violence that besides Alvarez  being a founding member was its spokesman from 2000 to 2004.

Las Goudous was founded in 1996, with the purpose of trying to make lesbian political and social struggles more visible in Spanish feminist spaces. They soon created the lesbian feminist fanzine Bollus Vivendi as there was nothing similar in that space for that audience at that time; most fanzines were aimed at gay men. The fanzine occupied a space between queer feminism and lesbian feminism. In response to Non Grata, Las Goudous got letters from all sorts of different women, including bisexuals, trans women, lesbians from across the whole of Spain and lesbians in prison.

In 1999, Ángeles Álvarez joined the Women Foundation where a specific work area for the prevention of gender violence was created.

The Basque Institute for Women in 1999 wrote their Third Plan of Positive Action on Women's Rights and Human Rights. In the introduction text, they mentioned the need  "eliminating additional barriers that many women find due to factors such as their race, language, origin ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation". It later proposes eliminating lesbophobic attitudes and raising awareness of lesbian rights in action points 1.1.2.3 and 1.1.2.4. It also proposes eliminating discrimination against people based on sexual orientation in action point 1.1.2.2. Despite these statements, of the later materials created to support these goals, only one ever specifically mention lesbian and that was in their magazine, Emakunde.

The Provincial Council of Bizkaia produced an equality plan in the early 2000s, but lesbians were never explicitly mentioned. The Provincial Council of Bizkaia  does support some lesbian groups through grants and awards, including giving the Centro de Estudios y Documentación para las Libertades Sexuales  the Berdintasuna prize in 2002.

In this stage, Ángeles Álvarez has been an advisor for the design of indicators in the follow-up systems of Law 5/2001 on the Prevention of Gender Violence of the Junta de Castilla la Mancha, of the Network of Cities against Violence Against Women in Madrid between the years 2000-2005 elaborating contents and framework program of action for said Network and Member of the State Observatory of Violence against Women as well as collaborating in training programs with the Spanish Red Cross and participating as a guest in the Speech on Prostitution in Spain approved in 2007.

Radical feminism and lesbian separatism
Lesbian separatism, which started in 1980, continued to develop in this period. It drew ideologically from difference feminism, but went further because the feminist movement did not provide lesbians with enough to meet their political demands and desires; they wanted something exclusively for lesbians and to not borrow from models by other groups.

Red de Amazonas drew largely from an existing network called La Mar, who had extensive contact with American lesbian activists. Red de Amazonas drew largely from an existing network called La Mar, who had extensive contact with American lesbian activists. Between 1987 and 1999, the grew published a couple of journals including Ones de la mar, Labris and Laberint. The longest print run of these involved Laberint and was 37 issues with its first issue published in 1989 and its last in 1999.

In 2000, Gretel Ammann died. Her partner Dolors Majoral donated her unpublished feminist works to Documentation Center of Ca la Dona.

Art
Azucena Vieites was an important artist in this period. Her artwork referenced lesbian cultural norms, and showed that affection among lesbians could be intense.

Lesbianas Sin Duda (LSD) was an artist collective founded in 1993. It continued to play an important role in lesbian artist circles in this period. They continued to use their art to subvert cultural expectations about what it meant to be a lesbian.

On 28 June 1996, LSD member Fefa Vila organized a round table discussion at the Club Faro de Vigo to discuss hierarchical relationships in Spain, and how lesbian relationships are ranked lower than that of gay men.

Literature
Beatriz and the Heavenly Bodies (Beatriz y los cuerpos celestes) by heterosexual identifying Lucía Etxebarría was a best selling novel published in 1998. It won the Nadal Prize. The plot revolved around a young woman in Madrid who falls in love with two different women. The book received large amounts of attention from the mainstream press and also made it possible for all Etxebarría's subsequent works, even if not focused on homosexual characters, to be prominently features in Spain's LGBT bookstores. It was important in establishing a lesbian chic market in Spanish literature, a market where lesbianism was defined by outsiders and made cool by them for other heterosexuals.

Miamor.doc by Concha Garcia was first published in 2001 by Plaza & Janés, and was important in terms of consolidating the lesbian fiction genre inside Spain, and featured homoerotic depictions. It sold out quickly in Spanish bookstores.

Where your name begins (Donde comienza tu nombre) was published in 2004 by Odisea. It was a best seller that year and featured a lesbian story line.

Television
Lesbian characters often appeared on television to reinforce heteronormativity, not to challenge it. When they appeared in an erotic context, it was often for the male gaze as opposed to for a lesbian consumer.

TV3 produced Nissaga de poder, which ran from 1996 to 1998. Using a format similar to the 1980s American serial Falcon Crest, the show followed Montsolís family. The youngest daughter in the family was Mariona  and portrayed by Núria Prims. The character fell in love with her best friend Inés, portrayed by Alicia González Láa. In the show's series finale, the couple inform Mariona's family of their intention to go to the Netherlands and marry.

Al salir de clase ran from 1997 to 2002. It had one episode that featured a character named  Clara, played by Laura Manzanedo, who falls in love with a character named Miriam played by Marian Aguilera. This leads Clara to question her own sexuality before determining she is not a lesbian, and then trying to burn down her house.

Laberint D'Ombres ran from 1998 to 2000 on Catalan station TV3. The characters  Trini and Rita, played by Marian Aguilera, are the first middle-aged lesbians to appear on Spanish television. They are not positive depictions of Spanish lesbians. The show had a major lesbian plotline involving the character Raquel played by Mercedes Sampietro. Raquel ran away from home with Isabel played by Pepa Lopez.

Compañeros ran on Spanish television from 1998 to 2002. One episode featured a plotline around a rumor that a girl is a lesbian. The main character Marta, played by Irene García, falls in love with a classmate named Sara. The episode implies they start a relationship but it is never mentioned again on the show.

From 1999 to 2006, Siete vidas ran on TeleCinco. The show featured a character named  Diana Freire who was played by Anabel Alonso. When Diana marries her girlfriend Nieves in Brussels, it became the first lesbian wedding to appear on national television. Nieves later leaves Diana after she fell in love with an MEP. Diana conformed to heterosexual male stereotypes of lesbianism, through her depiction as being sexy, explosive, less intelligent and dressed in such a way to show off her body.

Hospital Central ran from 2000 to 2012. It featured a bollera nurse named Esther played by Fátima Baeza who finally finds love when Doctor Mada, played by Patricia Vico, appears in her life. Throughout the show, the pair go through a number of lesbian cliches including coming out of the closet, cheating, getting married and becoming pregnant. The show is notable for being one of the few to end with a lesbian couple getting a happily ever after.