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Paper short abstract:

The political importance of LGBTQ Pride events in major European cities may hide appropriated activist labour, digested and simplified into amenities and attractions for queer tourism. Drawing from fieldwork in Madrid, this paper explores the appropriation and domestication of past activist labour.

Paper long abstract:

LGBTQ—lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer—Prides have become one of the most relevant tourist events in major Western cities. According to anthropologist Begonya Enguix (2009, 2019) and the event's organisers, Madrid's Pride is not only Spain's largest LGBTQ event but also the most attended one throughout Europe. Since 1996, this event has grown into a party and a political occasion that transcends the main gayborhood, Chueca, scattering into several downtown locations as well as nearby cities. The event's growth in public funding, private sponsorship and media visibility and publicity has not been free of controversies and conflicts, resonating several of the key debates in most Western Prides: those of the boundaries between party and politics, or consumption and protest (Kates & Belk, 2001); the role of LGBTQ tourism in the geopolitics of unequal discrimination and oppression (Puar, 2002); or the intersection of gender and sexual diversity within the capitalist mode of production (Drucker, 2014). Drawing from these prisms with which to analyse the role of LGBTQ tourism promotion, this paper explores the role of past activist labour for the construction, definition and consolidation of cities as LGBTQ or diverse destinations. This paper draws from field work in Madrid 2016-2019 and uses Marc Morell's (2015) concept of urban labour in order to analyse the appropriation of the historical goals and victories of local LGBTQ social movements as implicit or explicit amenities and building blocks for the tourist destination.