Paper short abstract:

This paper will highlight the centrality of the appropriation of popular culture and religiosity in Garraf by the local LGTBQI+ community, and how, ultimately, they become central elements of identity and resistance in their personal sexo-generic processes.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents the partial results of an ongoing research project on the appropriation and participation of popular rituals and mysticism of Catholic denomination by segments of the LGTBQI+ collective.

Far from the clichés, misunderstandings and prejudices that derive from them, this paper aims to highlight a perspective whereby certain expressions of popular religiosity can serve as an instrument for the generation and subsequent habitation of their own symbolic universes by social segments that are mistreated by institutions and by the social majorities. Underlining that these same spaces and practices of popular Catholic religiosity - parish associations, popular dances - are spaces and spheres of identity and sexo-generic resistance for the LGTBQI+ community.

The ethnography was carried out in the Garraf region, in the province of Barcelona. It is well known that one of its most important towns, Sitges, has become a meeting and reference point for the LGTBQI+ community, where, as in the neighbouring towns of Vilanova i la Geltrú and Sant Pere de Ribes, important religious events with a high participation of people belonging to the LGTBQI+ community take place.