Gay Sitges Link LGTBI Association commemorates, on Sunday 17 May, the International Day against LGTBIFobia.

It is a date that we have been celebrating since 2009 at a national level and in Sitges it has a particular significance as a town that erected the first monument against homophobia.

It was placed on the stones of The Pier on October 5th 2006,  and in 2014 was moved to its current much more visible and accessible location.

The pink triangle was a badge of shame, discrimination and hatred to identify homosexuals who were confined in Nazi Germany’s concentration and extermination camps.

This ominous symbol has taken on a new meaning, becoming a symbol of pride belonging to the LGTBI community.

Yet remembering the sad memory of the horror that homosexuals suffered in the extermination camps during World War II.

In Sitges this pink triangle is the permanent memorial. It is a perennial memory to the regrettable harassment of homosexuals by police requiring documentation while walking on the beach.

A demonstration to support the LGBTI community by walking the same walk in the summer of 1996 also faced intimidation. For that reason the legend 1996-2006 (when the pink triangle was erected) and the motto Never again is on its base.

We must ensure we never again endure or witness harassment or intimidation on the grounds of sexual identity.

Although we have made great strides we are still not free of LGTBIFobia, so we need to celebrate and uphold this day.

The date of May 17 was chosen specifically to commemorate the World Health Organization’s 1990 decision to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder.

Discrimination against the LGTBI community has many faces: visible and invisible, external and internal, such as discrimination in our workplaces, or discrimination in schools and educational institutes in the form of bullying.

Childhood and adolescence are age groups that deserve special protection and respect for diversity.

Schools must be safe spaces free of homophobia, lesbophobia, transphobia and biphobia. So must workplaces and streets, cities, and entire villages.

There should be no places free of LGBTI identity and places free of violence and hatred.

This year the celebration of IDAHOT is marked by the health crisis of COVID 19, a global pandemic that has brought us back to the most critical moments of the AIDS crisis.

So in a different way, we have seen the importance of health and humanity before the the economy and finances.

We are here to denounce attitudes of hatred and violence against the LGTBI community.

This year Poland has had unfortunate notice for the segregation into so-called “free zones of LGBT ideology” (Strefa wolna od LGBT). As if it were possible to put physical boundaries on human feelings.

Rafal Trzaskowsky, Liberal Mayor of Warsaw signed a declaration supporting LGBT rights. The reaction of conservative groups (political parties, the media and the Polish Catholic Church) was to find a scapegoat, focusing first on the LGTBI community and continuing with ramifications against immigrants, a xenophobia that sadly reminds us of the pink triangle period under Nazism.

We must be very alert, in a state of alarm, to the growth of neo-populist movements, based on hatred and fear as these are the seeds of homophobia.

Transsexuals are a group that we must value and respect. We must denounce intimidating, violent or hateful actions and attitudes. There is no need to give examples because they have sadly recently seen these in the news and we all have them in mind.

We are slowly advancing in equality and diversity, in social inclusion, eradicating exclusion.

Our work is pedagogical and active.

Every act of defense we do for the most vulnerable is brave and resonates, conveys justice and transforms prejudice, exposing the inhumanity of violence and the senselessness of hatred.

A look is sometimes an accusation and silence a prison. We must break the silence, and we will break it with music, the universal language that gives us joy and open expression in a diversity of colour and positive feelings.

We will fight LGTBIphobia now and always, from Sitges and from wherever it is needed.

Join us for a celebration of music and to support our LGBTI community and our LGBTI friendly Sitges community.