“El Todo Poderoso nos ayude, para llegar a lo que deseamos”: homosexuality and Catholicism in Franco’s Spain (1954–1970)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article traces the constant struggle for control over representation between gay people and Francoist state agents. Gay narrations of self did not always involve a negation of Catholic dogma, which was often reinterpreted and incorporated into articulate defenses of homoeroticism. Moreover, transnational networks built on the basis of an insider critique of the Catholic hierarchy's stance on same-sex desires preceded the formation of gay liberation fronts by decades. These networks connected Spanish and Latin American queer communities by virtue of the former's reliance on the latter's access to the publishing and entertainment industries, given the stringent censorship imposed by the Franco regime in Spain. This article focuses on judicial transcripts, photographs, personal correspondence and literary and oral sources to explore how shifting cultural ideals and lived experiences informed each other. Thus, I argue that the discrepancy between the state-enforced view of homosexuality as a set of purely physical (“putrefied”) practices leading males to cave to their lowest predatory instincts and people's erotic and affective lived experiences reveals how queer communities were able to articulate dissident discourses at the interstices of homophobic institutions.