Pride! 2025 - PRIDE! BCN

Culture is the territory of resistance, memory, and celebration for LGBTQIA+ people. It is not just a symbolic space: it is the trench from which we fight, the refuge where we recognize ourselves, the celebration where we affirm our existence. Through art, dance, theater, music, and the spoken word, society builds spaces to express oneself freely, to make diverse realities visible, and to challenge the norms that exclude us. Dissident culture has always been a driver of change and a collective refuge—a place to exist without censorship, imagine alternative futures, and proudly affirm our diverse identities.

LGBTQIA+ culture is full of voices that were silenced, persecuted, and too often killed by the heteronormative and patriarchal system. Artists of words, music, and dance were pushed out of official spaces, erased from academia, and condemned to oblivion. Today, paradoxically, the same ideologies that contributed to their marginalization try to appropriate their legacy, stripping it of political meaning and turning it into hollow decoration. Reclaiming LGBTQIA+ culture also means recovering these voices, honoring their memory, and denouncing the hypocrisy of a system that once wanted them dead but now uses them to polish its image.

But LGBTQIA+ culture is not only resistance and memory: it is the culture of progress. It is the force that propels the world forward, the seed of major social changes, the revolution that challenges inertia and fear. Without the creativity, courage, and dissident vision of LGBTQIA+ people, culture—and society—would be poorer, duller, and more submissive. LGBTQIA+ culture is the engine that breaks down walls, questions dogmas, and opens paths toward a freer and more just future for everyone.

LGBTQIA+ people have always been at the forefront of art, literature, music, thought, and social innovation. We have defied censorship, voiced silences, turned difference into beauty, and dissidence into a banner. Progress cannot be understood without our contribution: without us, culture would be a repetition of dogmas and prejudice—a dead culture. We are the culture that moves the world forward, that turns pain into hope, marginalization into pride, invisibility into presence.

Fighting censorship and invisibility.

Censorship and invisibility are tools of oppression. The cultural sector still expels, marginalizes, and silences dissident voices. We must rebel against this censorship and demand spaces where our existence and creativity are respected and celebrated. LGBTQIA+ culture is a collective response to the attempt to erase us.

We are culture.

Culture is not distant or abstract: culture is us—the LGBTQIA+ people who write, dance, paint, sing, organize, love, and fight. Without us, there is no culture. We are the heart beating within art, the voice that defies silence.

Reclaiming our references.

We cannot allow our references to be erased, appropriated, or turned into hollow icons. We must reclaim LGBTQIA+ artists, thinkers, activists, and creators from all eras: those who paved the way, those transforming the world today, and those yet to come. Their memory and work are part of humanity’s heritage.

Without LGBTQIA+ people, there is no culture.

Let’s say it loud and clear: without the presence, creativity, and struggle of LGBTQIA+ people, culture would be an empty shell. We are essential. We are the living heartbeat of culture—the one that pushes society forward.

Defending the values of diversity.

Diversity is not a threat—it is a richness. LGBTQIA+ culture defends plurality, freedom, respect, and coexistence. It is these values that have driven great cultural and social progress.

Transformative role models.

LGBTQIA+ role models have always been transformative: they have broken molds, challenged systems, and opened new paths. Without their courage, the world would be much smaller.

Tools for empowerment.

Culture gives us the tools to be critical, to empower ourselves, to build strong and free identities. It teaches us to question, to imagine, to fight for a better future.

Expression of LGBTQIA+ realities.

Our culture expresses our realities: our joys and sorrows, our struggles and victories. It is the mirror in which we see ourselves and the lighthouse that guides future generations.

Culture as knowledge, values, and organization.

Culture is not just art: it is knowledge, values, ways of organizing and living that build identity, belonging, and community. It needs visibility and role models. It feeds critical thinking and freedom. All of this is incompatible with censorship and oppression.

Defending and saving LGBTQIA+ culture.

In the face of recent attacks, the rise of the far right, and hate speech, we must defend our culture more strongly than ever. We will not allow ourselves to be erased, censored, or forced back into the closet of history.

Political context: more visibility than ever.

We are living in difficult times, when the far right threatens rights and freedoms. Now more than ever, we must be visible, raise our voices, and occupy public and cultural space. Our existence is resistance.

LGBTQIA+ culture is the heartbeat of progress. It is the light that illuminates the way toward a freer, fairer, more diverse world. We will not be erased—because without us, the world stops.

Defending LGBTQIA+ culture is defending the future.

It is defending life. It is defending humanity.

THE CAMPAIGN

The history of art and culture is full of names that are part of the LGBTQIA+ community. From Leonardo Da Vinci to Chapelle Roan, to Sappho and Arkano. These figures, far from being niche, belong to the collective imagination, and whose diversity makes the world less gray. Because LGBTQIA+ culture today is universal culture. At Pride Barcelona, we have selected 12 universal representatives of LGBTQIA+ culture, one for each color of the inclusive flag, who have been portrayed by 12 diverse illustrators from Catalonia.