Plaza de Pedro Zerolo: The Square of Equal Marriage
Why is it significant?
Find a bench in this small square of trees and terraces and look at the street sign. Not long ago it carried another name. Today it honours a man who was still alive at the start of this century, which in a city of saints and kings is quite unusual.
Key Facts
| Place | Plaza de Pedro Zerolo: The Square of Equal Marriage |
|---|---|
| Address | Plaza de Pedro Zerolo, 28004 Madrid, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.42110, -3.69980 |
| Part of Walk | From the Dos de Mayo to La Movida: Malasaña & Chueca, Madrid's Rebel Quarters |
| Generated | Generated |
Find a bench in this small square of trees and terraces and look at the street sign. Not long ago it carried another name. Today it honours a man who was still alive at the start of this century, which in a city of saints and kings is quite unusual.
To understand why, you need to remember where Spain started. Under Franco, homosexuality was persecuted by law. In 1954 it was added to an old law against vagrants and criminals, and in 1970 a new law on so-called social danger allowed gay men and women to be imprisoned or sent to special centres. Only in 1979, after the dictatorship, did homosexuality disappear from that law.
The first Pride demonstration in Madrid marched in 1978, when it still took real courage. In the 1990s a lawyer and activist named Pedro Zerolo, born in Caracas in 1960 and raised in the Canary Islands, became one of the leading voices of the movement, and later a socialist councillor in Madrid's city hall. His cause was simple to state and hard to win: the same marriage for everyone.
In 2005 he won it. Spain became the third country in the world, after the Netherlands and Belgium, to open marriage to same-sex couples, with full rights including adoption. A country that had imprisoned gay people within living memory now stood at the front of the line. Zerolo died of cancer in 2015, aged fifty-four, and soon afterwards the city gave his name to this square in the heart of Chueca.
Come back during Pride week and you will not recognise it: stages go up in the squares of the barrio, and the whole neighbourhood turns into one long open-air concert, with Spanish pop anthems sung by thousands of voices at once. Now make your way north-east through the streets of Chueca to Calle de Fernando VI and the most unusual palace in Madrid.