14. “Homophobia in 1970s Spain,” a book by Manuel Ángel Soriano

Egales, 2016. Translated from Spanish to English by Steven Capsuto.

In 1979, the year when Spain finally decriminalized homosexuality, a student in Madrid wrote his doctoral thesis about the precarious state of gay rights in his country, documenting the history of Spain’s recently founded Gay Liberation groups. The university approved the thesis topic and the approach, but once his paper was complete, he was told that this was an unacceptable topic after all and he would need to write a new thesis on a different subject. He refused and never got his doctorate.

Thirty-three years later, Egales (the leading Spanish publisher of LGBTQ+ books) published his 1979 thesis along with a new introduction and essay by the author, putting that 1970s document in the context of what had happened in the intervening decades. In 2015, I was asked to translate it into English for an ebook release.

The book’s style and tone are what you’d expect: it’s a 1970s academic thesis. But it’s also one of the few sources available in English documenting the manifestos and goals of Gay Liberation organizations during Spain’s transition to democracy.
 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Manuel Ángel Soriano-Gil was born in Madrid, Spain, in 1948. He holds an undergraduate degree in Psychology and a professional diploma in Clinical Psychology from the Complutense University of Madrid. Since 1972, when he began his career in this field, he has worked as a psychotherapist and in human resource management companies. In 1978, Zero-ZYX published his first book: Homosexualidad y represión (Homosexuality and repression). Egales has published his queer self-help volumes Tal como somos (As we are – 2007) and La juventud homosexual (Gay youth – 2012), as well as his book about the lives of older LGBTQI+ people in Spain: La tercera edad LGTBIQ+ (2024). Throughout his career, he has written articles on social exclusion and on topics related to human resources.